


Hot Space

by sprl1199



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Big Bang, Community: casestory, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:31:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprl1199/pseuds/sprl1199
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unable to entirely quit hoping for more despite the cooling of their friendship, Methos drops in unannounced at MacLeod’s new residence in Seacouver. Mac isn’t in, and after being woken by an unlikely intruder with an even more unlikely story, the ROG comes to the conclusion that his absence isn’t exactly voluntary. Investigation ensues.  Duncan/Methos first time slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Staying Power

**Author's Note:**

> Please visit the [art post](http://nickygabriel.livejournal.com/507392.html) for this fic to marvel at the pretty, pretty images crafted by the incomparable nickygabriel.

**Staying Power**  
I've got fire down below  
I'm just a regular dynamo  
Want some smooth company  
Don't lose control just hang on out with me  
Got to get to know each other  
But we got plenty of time  
Did you hear the last call baby  
You and me got staying power yeah

[October 14th, 2000]

It smells like fish.

Not that it’s unexpected, of course, Mac’s new residence being a houseboat and therefore surrounded by fish. But it strikes Methos (which in and of itself strikes him, since he hadn’t realized he had any sort of preconception about the place) that the odor seems almost too prosaic to permeate the noble abode of the virtuous Highlander: that _upright_ dwelling of decency where he lay his _principled_ head down every night after a day of—no doubt—rescuing damsels and routing villains.

He admits to himself he may be somewhat bitter about Mac’s most recent relocation.

 _I just need a bit of time, Methos,_ Mac had said, stupidly soulful eyes entreating. _Some space. You understand._

Methos realizes he’s muttering the remembered sentences aloud in an overly enunciated Scottish brogue and twists his mouth into a scowl instead. A pedestrian walking toward him on the sidewalk jaywalks to cross the street before reaching him.

 _You understand._ It had been phrased as a statement rather than a question, and Methos wonders when Mac had suddenly decided he was so empathetic.

There’s a crumpled can lying in his path, and he kicks it, taking vicious pleasure in the loud clanging sound it makes as it rolls along the sidewalk.

And Methos _had_ understood. Given the circumstances of Connor’s death, it wasn’t surprising that his younger cousin had needed to take some time to grieve and come to terms with what had happened.

His understanding had begun to wane after six months of silence. He and Mac hadn’t ever reached the point of calling each other up whenever the mood struck or firing off update emails at random, but he still had expected _something._ A housewarming party perhaps. Mac always seemed inordinately proud of his home decorating skill, and he took any opportunity available to ply his friends and acquaintances with gourmet cooking and perfectly paired wines. But there had been nothing.

The final straw had come in the form of Joe—still in Paris and adjusting to his new leadership position in the Watchers—receiving a phone call in the bar office. Joe hadn’t tried to hide the call exactly, but Methos had seen the overly casual way the Watcher had closed the door, keeping his back turned all the while to prevent lip reading. He needn’t have bothered: given Methos’s skill with a computer and a modem, accessing phone records required much less energy than sneaking around and listening at keyholes.

Methos hadn’t mentioned the phone call that night or the next. But the following day he had boarded a flight to Washington. He gives it another day or so before Joe calls him.

Methos looks up to check the numbers of the houseboats on the dock and realizes that he’s arrived at his destination.

Mac’s new home is somewhat larger than the one he’d owned in Paris: a two-story blocky affair paneled in that new concrete siding that’s made to look like wood. Pots of paint and stacks of drywall make it clear that Mac is performing renovations on the second story, and the windows of the top half—rounded to look like port holes—sit open. The first floor is quietly battened down, shades pulled across the windows and door closed tight. He doesn’t sense Mac’s Presence, but an exquisitely restored classic Mustang is crouched in the slip’s parking space.

The sun had set an hour ago, and Methos assumes that MacLeod is out at dinner somewhere. Most likely with some dainty thing he picked up somewhere cultured. Like the ballet or an art museum. They probably walked arm in arm to enjoy the spring weather. Or perhaps took a tandem bicycle.

He tells himself to stop scowling so ferociously. It wouldn’t do to draw attention with his sword in his luggage and no resident Scotsman to vouch for him.

Methos sidles closer to the houseboat. The smell of plaster and sawdust wafts about in the air competing with the fish. There’s a small deck upon which Mac had placed a small bistro table with two chairs, a collection of herbs and an urn of hydrangeas. More painting supplies—apparently MacLeod has decided to accent something with a rather cheerful shade of yellow—are stacked near the railing.

Methos walks casually onto the boat and picks the lock on the door. He doesn’t look around to make certain no one is watching (a fairly suspicious action in and of itself), but he still catches something out of the corner of his eye before he walks in. He glances down.

There’s a streak of fresh blood on the boards of the deck just outside the front door, the bright red color obvious on the weathered boards.

Methos stares at it for a moment. A bird nesting on a power line above the dock stirs hopefully and lets out a screech that echoes eerily across the water. Soft waves lap at the base of the boat in a gentle, hushed refrain.

Then Methos takes one of the paint rags and drops it on top of the mark to hide it on his way through the door.

Mac can thank him later.

**

Several hours later, Mac still hasn’t returned and Methos is bored. He’s poked through everything in the houseboat that there is to poke through, liberated the remainder of Mac’s imported beer, and put his feet up on the artistic, driftwood coffee table on sheer principle. Mac still hasn’t realized the value inherent in a television, and the security settings on his laptop don’t present any sort of meaningful challenge (and reveal only personal budgets and stock quotes at any rate).

Sighing with the full load of his ennui, Methos rolls his head across the back of the oversized sofa and lazily rotates to face the antique clock on the bookshelf.

Almost midnight. She must be quite the conversationalist.

Sighing again, he rolls his head in the opposite direction to take stock—once again—of the space. Mac really is sadly predictable. Despite the presence of a second story, the layout of furniture in the houseboat is eerily similar to that of the Parisian barge. The large, low bed dominates the wall off to his left, its no doubt extremely soft cotton sheets neatly tucked in under a tasteful comforter in navy blue.

A solid, glass-topped case, unlocked, tastefully displays several antique weapons, with MacLeod’s family blade—the Claymore—given the place of honor. Methos stares at it for a time and remembers.

**  
[February 8th, 1997]

“Going somewhere?” MacLeod’s tone was forcefully nonchalant, but the tension around his eyes betrayed him as he walked—stalked really—up to where Methos was loading his belongings into the Jimmy.

Methos sighed. He knew it was going to go this way. He _knew._

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“What are you running from – the question or the answer?” MacLeod was relentless, his mouth tight with hurt.

Methos kept his eyes on the luggage rather than confront the look on his friend’s (was he still his friend?) face.

“There is no answer, MacLeod,” he said. “Let it be.”

But MacLeod could never let go—be it from his past, his friendships, his damnable code of honor—and Methos found himself pressing the best man he knew up against the Jimmy. MacLeod was glaring into his face with an expression that was equal parts pain and recrimination, and he was helpless to do anything at all but allow the ugly truth to spill out of him.

“No, it is _not_ enough. I killed, but I didn't just kill fifty. I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed ten thousand! And I was good at it. And it wasn't for vengeance. It wasn't for greed. It was because I liked it. Cassandra was nothing. Her village was _nothing._ Do you know who I was? I was Death.”

It was almost a relief when their positions were reversed and Methos was thrown up against the metal of the vehicle. MacLeod’s face was pulled up in a grimace of rage and disgust, but it obscured the hurt that had been there before, and for that Methos was grateful.

“Death. Death on a horse,” Methos continued, burning MacLeod with his words and his gaze. Refusing to make this easy. Pushing him to safety. Pushing him away.

“When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was me. I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night. Is that what you want to hear? The answer…is yes. Oh, yes.”

When MacLeod responded, his voice had been choked: garroted by the truth that Methos had forced upon their friendship.

“We’re through.”

**

Methos comes back to himself abruptly as he forcibly terminates the memory. He doesn’t want to relive what happened at the power plant, though if he were forced to choose the worst moment of that entire shambles, the confrontation in the parking lot would be it.

He whirls away from the case. He’s had enough with waiting. It was a long flight and an even longer day, and since Mac isn’t there to relegate him to the couch, he decides to put the bed’s apparent comfort to the test.

It passes.

A soft creaking wakes him instantly an indeterminable amount of time later. It’s very dark in the houseboat, with only a small glow trickling through the window from the streetlight outside. It’s still enough to see the shape of a figure as it moves stealthily across the landing.

His dagger (or, rather, Mac’s dagger: an eighteenth century ballock) is retrieved from under the pillow and held threateningly against the throat of the intruder in an instant.

The shape squeaks.

“May I help you?” Methos asks in his silkiest, deadliest tones.

“I don’t-, oh god, please don’t hurt me,” comes the response. The voice is young, female, and terrified. He doesn’t remove the dagger.

“Take a step backwards,” he orders evenly. “We’re going to turn on the light.”

“Okay,” the voice says tremulously, and together they step slowly towards the wall.

As the ceiling light illuminates the scene, Methos sees that his assessment is correct. The girl—and she is a girl: seventeen, eighteen at the most—is pale and trembling, brown eyes opened as wide as they can go and beginning to fill with tears. She’s a bit taller than average and thin, her frame that of a gangly adolescent. Her hair falls to her shoulders in a light brown tangle.

The light seems to drive the reality of the situation home to her, and her trembles become full body shakes. Methos moves the dagger before she accidentally slices her throat, but he keeps it in his hand.

She doesn’t seem to be able to meet his eyes, but that’s most likely due to her keeping her focus on the dagger. Smart girl.

“Now,” Methos tells her calmly, “let’s try this again. May I help you with something? After you broke in here. At,” he glances at the antique clock, “two a.m.”

She quails at his question, eyes still on the blade. She licks her lips nervously. “I’m- I’m looking for Mr. MacLeod. He told me to come here.”

“He’s not here,” Methos says bluntly. She shifts her eyes from the dagger to his face. Her eyes are pleading.

“Do you know where he is?” she whispers. There’s something in the cast of her mouth that speaks of horror and terror. “Have you seen him tonight?”

“No,” Methos answers, and her eyes close in resignation. He feels a quick whisper of intuition and at last lowers the dagger and tucks it into its sheath. The girl looses a relieved breath and sags against the wall, exhaustion obvious in the lines of her face.

“Come on,” Methos says to this unexpected diversion. “I’ll make us some coffee. Of the Irish variety.”

**

The intruder’s name is Amy Darling. Methos would wager that the first name is genuine while the last is not. She knows Mac from his weekly volunteering at the Brighter Days Youth Resource Center, which is without a doubt an act of philanthropy that MacLeod would engage in, and Methos doesn’t question it for a moment. She’s quick to point out that she’s been eighteen for a week, and Methos guesses she’s a former runaway. Either that or she wants to make it abundantly clear that she’s legally entitled to the cigarettes she’s pulled from one of the pockets of her worn cargo pants.

She thinks that Mac has been kidnapped. Methos finds the idea less shocking than she clearly does, gauging by her overly wide eyes as she recounts her story.

“I was at the Center later than usual,” Amy says. Her voice is rather throaty and surprisingly deep when she’s not terrified. It suits her.

“What time exactly?” Methos asks. He had arrived at the houseboat at nine.

“Eight or eight-thirty. Something like that.” She takes a shallow drag of her cigarette. She’s inhaled hardly any of the smoke, and Methos would bet she uses the cigarettes for a prop rather than for enjoyment. “All of the staff was gone for the night.”

“But MacLeod was there?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that at first.” Amy tosses back her Irish coffee (instant, as MacLeod is more of a tea drinker, though the whiskey is excellent) with no regard for the heat of the liquid, and Methos upgrades his opinion of her ability to handle discomfort. Her trembling has finally abated, but her face still seems a shade or two too pale.

“What happened?”

Her focus is on the lighted end of her cigarette. She hasn’t bothered to use anything as an ashtray, and as she watches, a segment of ash falls onto her thigh. She doesn’t brush it off.

“I was leaving for the night,” she answers after a moment. “Out the side entrance, like I always do, but there were three men there with a van. One of them grabbed me.”

“Did you recognize them?”

“Not really,” she says. “It was dark, and it happened really fast. I don’t think I recognized any of them.” It seems unlikely, given the circumstances of the attempted abduction, but Methos lets it lie for the moment.

“What happened then?” he asks.

Amy lifts the cigarette to her lips for the second time since she lit it, but she doesn’t smoke it. “I tried to hit him, but I couldn’t think, so I just sort of flailed around some. I screamed, and that’s when Mr. MacLeod came.”

“From where?” Methos asks.

“From inside the Center. From the same door as me.”

“But you didn’t know he was there until that moment?” She emphatically shakes her head.

“What did MacLeod do?” Methos continues.

“He hit the man that was holding me and made him let go. Then he yelled at me to run.”

“And then?”

“I ran.” A ghost of a smile, self-deprecating and humorless, comes to her lips. “I ran for miles and hid for hours. At least, that’s what it felt like. Then I got cold and I came here. Mr. MacLeod had given me his card one time at the Center. He told me I could come to him if I ever needed help.”

“Of course he did,” Methos says. He leans back in his chair and surveys her carefully. She fidgets but meets his stare, not defiantly, exactly, but with a stubbornness that looks well honed.

“You’re certain you don’t know who they were?” he asks her. His tone is casual, but she bristles at the insinuation.

“Yes.” Her voice is resolute. “I had never seen them before.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

Amy blanches slightly at the question before casting her eyes down to her knees. Her fingers come up to poke at the ash on her leg.

“I know I should have now,” she says, fiddling with the ash. “At the time, it didn’t occur to me. I-, I was so scared. I couldn’t think at all. I just wanted to get away. And then I wanted to get here.”

Assuming the story is true (and Methos is under no delusion that it must be factual simply because it comes from a young, female source), it sounds as though Mac had managed to stumble onto a mortal kidnapping. Given the typical responses of the criminals engaged in such acts, chances are good that Mac will be killed: temporarily, most likely, unless kidnapping rings have suddenly started practicing decapitation as the norm. Chances are very good that the body will be disposed of in some out of the way locale, and the man will make his way home once reviving. Hardly a dire emergency.

Methos is silent as he thinks through the ramifications of the girl’s story, and it takes a minute before he notices that she’s waiting for a response of some sort, head bent low as though waiting for judgment. She looks ashamed. He casts about for something appropriate to say.

“It’s alright to run,” Methos tells her at last. “It doesn’t make you weak. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do.”

Amy nods uncertainly at this hard-won wisdom, but she doesn’t look as though she feels any better.

“Are you a friend of Mr. MacLeod’s?” she asks him cautiously. It’s the first time she’s thought to question his presence at the houseboat.

“After a fashion,” Methos replies. “We’ve known each other a long time at any rate.”

“I see,” she says, though he can tell from her face that she doesn’t. “What’s your name?”

“Adam Pierson. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he says, giving her his hand and his soon-to-be-retired current identity. She shakes it perfunctorily before her face is split by a huge yawn. She blushes.

“Is there somewhere I can take you for the rest of the night?” Methos asks her, taking the hint. He’s expecting a potentially very bloody Highlander to walk through the door at some point during the evening, and it would be best if their young guest were elsewhere.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” The girl looks slightly uncomfortable at the suggestion, despite being the one to make it. Clearly not a fan of law enforcement.

“Let’s give it a few hours,” Methos replies easily. “You don’t know for sure that MacLeod is in trouble.” And if he is, he’s almost certainly able to get himself out of it. “He may be on his way back right now.”

“But what if he’s not?”

“Then we can always call the police in the morning and report him missing. At any rate, the police won’t file a missing person’s report for twenty-four hours.”

“They’d file a kidnapping report,” Amy says, a bit mulishly, though he can see that she’s wavering. She clearly doesn’t have any desire whatsoever to speak to the police.

“Do you have anywhere you can stay tonight? Back to the youth center?” Amy blanches white at the suggestion, and he amends “Is there a friend or a relative you could stay with?”

Amy’s face screws up in thought, and it takes her a moment to answer. “I suppose you could take me to Brant’s,” she replies slowly.

“And who is Brant?”

“Another Center employee. He’s in charge of the teen programs. He said his door was always open if we needed it.”

“Do you happen to know where his door is?” Methos asks.

“Yes,” she answers immediately. “But it’s across town.”

Methos dons Mac’s expensive leather jacket and snags a spare set of car keys from the hook in the kitchen, shaking them meaningfully. “That won’t be a problem.”

**

Brant Mercer’s townhouse is in an older brownstone in a quiet neighborhood that’s just beginning to edge into seediness. There’s an old Volkswagen parked out front and a dying crepe myrtle bush up against the stairs.

Brant himself answers the door only a minute after Amy rings the bell, pulling down a threadbare sweatshirt while simultaneously rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

He’s a tall man—perhaps an inch or two taller than Methos—and thin, but wiry strength is obvious in the ropey, well-defined muscles of his forearms as he pushes his hands through thick brown hair. His fingers are long and well-shaped, and his nose has just the very slightest bend to the left.

Methos likes it.

“Amy?” Brant asks after a moment, blinking confusedly at the teenager through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “What are you doing here? Is everything alright?”

Amy isn’t given a chance to answer before Brant shifts his attention to Methos, standing just behind her.

“Who are you?” His eyes, like his hair, are a deep chocolate.

“A friend,” Methos responds smoothly, giving the other man his best harmless Adam Pierson smile.

“A friend?” Brant parrots dubiously. He doesn’t seem to be entirely awake, but he’s alert enough to be skeptical. “Of Amy’s?”

“No, of Duncan MacLeod’s actually. I believe you know him from the Youth Center?”

“Well, yes.” Brant looks confused. “But he-, why are you at my apartment?”

“Mr. MacLeod was kidnapped!” Amy interjects. “From the Center. I went to his house to see if he’d gotten away only he wasn’t there and Adam was, and now I need somewhere to sleep and I didn’t know where else to go.” Her voice trails off uncertainly at the end of her (rather impressive) ramble and her lip trembles. It is clear that Brant possesses a fair amount of empathy—or is at least capable of looking like he does—as his eyes soften immediately.

“Come inside,” Brant says, stepping to the side and opening the door invitingly. “We’ll get this sorted out, but the stoop is no place for any of us at this hour.”

Amy moves immediately to enter the townhouse but stops just short of the door. “Can Adam come too?” she asks, voice small as she looks back at Methos hopefully. He groans inwardly. She’d better not have imprinted on him.

“Of course he can.” Brant’s voice is just as warm as when he’d addressed Amy, but his eyes on Methos are assessing.

It’s the gaze that decides him. As much as he’d like to tell himself that he wants to remain on hand to direct any conversation about MacLeod in an appropriate (and safely vague) direction, the truth of the matter is that waiting at the houseboat for a likely disgruntled Scotsman is much less appealing than the inviting light spilling out of the townhouse’s door. Or the bright eyes of an increasingly awake social worker.

Methos saunters through the doorway to cover the shiver his spine wants to make at the surprisingly intense eye contact. “Many thanks,” he tells his host as he passes.

Brant smells like very good coffee, and it makes his stomach want to rumble.

**

Brant’s tangible coffee is just as delicious as the scent it left on him, and Methos inhales deeply in appreciation. He became adept at long nights so many years ago that he rarely feels the need for stimulation to stay focused. But it really is very good coffee.

Amy has hot chocolate, but Methos sees her eyeing the Bailey’s in the fridge with a rather wistful expression. He wouldn’t mind some himself. Perhaps the opportunity will present itself to sneak some while Brant’s back is turned. It’s worth watching for at any rate.

Unfortunately Brant doesn’t appear inclined to turn his back anytime soon. It isn’t clear if it’s Amy or Methos that he feels bears such scrutiny, but his eyes—slightly bloodshot from the hour but clear and focused otherwise—hardly waver as Amy recounts her story for the second time that night.

Brant frowns when she ends her story with finding Methos on the houseboat. She doesn’t mention being threatened with an antique dagger, which Methos appreciates. Perhaps he can maneuver Brant out of the room long enough to grab the Bailey’s as a reward.

“Have you called the police?” Brant asks Methos, and it’s clear he must realize that Amy wouldn’t have contacted law enforcement unprompted. Methos doubts Brant will be put off with a promise to call in the morning the way that Amy was, and so long as they send the officer to Brant’s townhouse rather than the boat, it shouldn’t present a problem. MacLeod can cancel the report as soon as he returns.

“Not yet,” Methos answers the social worker. “Amy was concerned that the men may come by MacLeod’s boat looking for her, so she wanted to relocate first.” The lie makes Amy blink into her hot chocolate, but it’s her only reaction.

“I see,” Brant replies, watching Methos steadily. “Well now that you’re here and safe, we should make a police report immediately.” He stands and disappears down a small hallway off the kitchen.

While he’s gone, Methos snags the Bailey’s from the fridge and drops a bit into their mugs. Amy looks at him gratefully.

Brant returns with an older cordless phone in his hand and remains standing by the kitchen table staring down at it.

“Are you alright with me calling them?” he’s speaking down at his hand, and Methos realizes after a beat that he’s addressing Amy, implying that she is the one with the power to make the decision to involve the police. It’s masterfully done, and Methos gives a mental nod to Brant’s counseling abilities. The girl hesitates but responds firmly.

“Well, no, but if it’ll help Mr. MacLeod then we need to do it.”

Brant nods at her gently and paces while he dials the local police department. Amy’s expression is unhappy and rife with indecision at the coming police presence, and Methos knows this is the moment when a responsible, empathetic adult would pat her on the shoulder or offer sage words of reassurance.

He pours coffee into her mug over the hot chocolate. She’ll want to be alert for the inevitable questioning, and her eyes are beginning to droop.

Then he leans back in the creaky, wooden chair and waits.

**

The police officers who arrive to take Amy’s statement—Mullins and Mulligan, in a vaguely amusing Irish-themed coincidence—are openly skeptical of the story she tells, and it’s only Methos’s confirmation that MacLeod does indeed appear to be missing that prompt them to take a statement at all. But it doesn’t motivate them to be gentle in their questioning.

Amy’s _absolutely_ certain that she doesn’t know the men who allegedly took Mr. MacLeod? And what exactly is her relationship with the missing Mr. MacLeod? It’s very “interesting” that she is so familiar with the home address of one of the Youth Center’s volunteers. Why was she at the Youth Center after hours anyway? She _is_ aware that that area of town is well known for drug transactions, correct?

Amy looks close to tears where she sits in Brant’s small living room with the officers hovering over her, and Brant shoots a glare at the scene as he sits back down with Methos at the kitchen table.

“I knew this would happen,” Brant says gloomily. “I think very highly of law enforcement, and I know we have an excellent department, but every officer I’ve met needs some intensive training in social work concepts. They’re terrifying her.”

“It’s their job to be suspicious,” Methos points out. His stomach is beginning to clench angrily with too much caffeine and no food.

“And my job to be sympathetic. Yeah, I know,” Brant says ruefully. “It’s just frustrating. You work so hard to get these kids to trust someone, and then they have a run-in like this, and before you know it you’re back where you started.”

“Amy said you’re in charge of the teen program at the Youth Center,” Methos says, making it a question.

“I coordinate the daytime programs,” Brant answers. “Classes and outings and things like that. I also help out on the residential side of things, though there’s another employee in charge of that program. We’re actually in the process of building a new facility downtown. It should add another thirty beds for at risk youth with no place left to go.” He sounds as though he’s quoting from a fundraising pamphlet.

“It sounds like a wonderful program,” Methos says. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing Mac would be involved in. Boy Scout. “What did MacLeod do there?”

Brant’s eyes narrow in sudden suspicion. “I thought you were a friend of his.”

“I am,” Methos replies easily, “but we haven’t seen each other in several months, and I’m not sure what he’s up to these days.” Brant relaxes at once and gives Methos an apologetic smile.

“He’s one of the organization’s major donors, and he also volunteers twice a week with the teen education program. He’s a good man.”

“He certainly works hard to be one. Can you think of any reason he’d be at the Center after closing?” Methos asks.

“No,” Brant says, face blank with confusion. “His class is held in the afternoons, and as far as I know, he wasn’t there at all yesterday. Maybe he’d forgotten something from the day before? Or wanted to get something set up for his class tomorrow. Today, rather,” he amends, glancing at the clock. “Oh god, I have work today. I need to get some sleep.”

On cue, the police officers step back into the kitchen. Amy stays huddled on the couch in the living room, arms curled tightly around her midsection.

“I think we’ve got all we need,” one of them says. Methos thinks it’s Mullins, though he didn’t pay very close attention when they first introduced themselves. “We’ll put out a BOLO on Mr. MacLeod and the description of the dark van we got from Ms. Darling.” His inflection doesn’t change, but from his dour expression it’s clear he’s itching to put air quotes around both “dark van” and “Ms. Darling.” Given the hour, Methos doesn’t begrudge him his grim demeanor.

“Let us know if Mr. MacLeod makes contact, Mr. Pierson,” the other—taller and slimmer than the first and just as stone-faced—orders, handing Methos his card. “Where can we reach you if we have any follow-up questions?”

“At Mr. MacLeod’s houseboat,” Methos answers, rattling off the address and phone number.

“We’ll call you if we find out anything about your friend,” Mullins says, placing his verbal air quotes this time around “friend.” Methos gives him a bright smile.

“Thank you, Constable,” Methos says, emphasizing the incorrect title and playing up his accent. “I appreciate your assistance.”

The man just grunts, and as a pair the officers head for the door. Brant sees them out.

After he relocks the front door, the social worker sits next to Amy on the couch and takes her hand.

“I’m sorry. I know that was hard. But you did the right thing,” he says softly. She doesn’t answer beyond gently reclaiming her hand. Brant lets it go.

“I have a spare room that you’re more than welcome to,” he tells her. “You must be exhausted. Try to get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”

Without a word, Amy gets to her feet and climbs the stairs to the bedrooms, feet plodding heavily on the Berber carpet.

“Second on the right,” Brant calls after her. “There are towels in the bathroom across the hall.” The only response is the sound of a door closing emphatically.

The two men sit in silence for a minute, and then Methos pulls himself to his feet and pushes his hands into his pockets. “I’d better get back to the boat,” he says. “Mac may end showing up at some point.”

“Yeah,” Brant agrees absently, apparently lost in thought. His eyes are trained on the floor, and there’s a small furrow in his forehead as his eyebrows knit together. He shakes himself out of it and walks Methos to the door politely.

When Methos is standing on the stoop, Brant abruptly reaches out to touch his shoulder. His hand is warm through Methos’s borrowed leather jacket.

“If-, Well, I mean, if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of staying there alone, you can stay here.” Brant’s eyes are shadowed as the light from a streetlamp falls across his face and highlights his cheekbones attractively. He’s blushing, but he doesn’t drop his eyes from where they hold Methos’s gaze.

Methos lets the hand stay on his shoulder for a moment, enjoying the warmth, before he steps away. “I should really be there in case Mac shows up,” he says with genuine regret.

“Perhaps another time then,” Brant says, giving him a small smile. “Stay safe.”

“I’m very good at that,” Methos replies, and Brant laughs softly, though he couldn’t be aware of the subtext.

They wish each other a good night—what’s left of it anyway—before Methos drives back to the houseboat. There’s no Presence to greet him.

At four a.m., he’s lying alone in a large bed that smells like MacLeod and staring up at the dark ceiling. Then he realizes that he’s brooding and that if it keeps up, he’ll reach a point where he’ll be required to make fun of himself.

So he sleeps instead, more than half-expecting to be awoken at any moment by the approach of another Immortal.

But Mac doesn’t return.


	2. Back Chat

**Back Chat**  
Fat chance I have of making no romance  
If I'm ever going to win  
I'll have to get the last word in  
Take it from there  
Ooh, twisting every word I say  
Ha, wind me up and let me play  
Back chat oh yeah back chat

It’s eight a.m. the next morning when Methos pulls back up at the brownstone townhouse, and the neighborhood is a bustle of activity as residents leave for work, school, and other errands.

His arms are occupied with a box of donuts and a cardboard tray of to-go coffees, and he uses his hip to close the door to the Mustang. He pounds on the front door with his foot in lieu of using the doorbell.

Brant’s expression is one of pleased surprise as he opens the door to Methos’s kick.

“Adam! Good morning,” he says. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“I do my best to defy expectation,” Methos says. He hefts the box of donuts. “I brought sustenance.”

“Oh yum!” Amy says, pushing past Brant from inside and grabbing the box from Methos’s hands. “You’re my hero!”

She flings opens the box as she walks quickly back inside and makes a loudly pleased sound as she sees the selection. Methos and Brant follow more slowly, and she’s already seated at the kitchen table with a chocolate-glazed confection in her mouth when they join her.

Despite the presence of the to-go coffees, Brant moves to brew a pot. Given the quality of the beans, Methos doesn’t take offense.

“You seem livelier this morning,” Methos observes to Amy as he slides into one of the chairs. Her hair is wet and combed, and she’s in the same clothing that she was in last night. “Sleep well?”

“Not really,” Amy says. Her voice is cheerful enough, but she wrinkles her nose and makes a disgruntled face. “I kept waking up with nightmares.”

“I can sympathize,” Methos says, though he hadn’t slept enough the night before to have any dreams. He’d kept waking to the small creaks of the houseboat shifting gently in its moorings, each time hoping to see MacLeod walking through the door, and each time being disappointed.

It’s been almost twelve hours since MacLeod was abducted. If the man had simply been shot and dumped—the scenario Methos had been expecting—he would have returned. The fact that he hasn’t makes it clear that some snooping is in order. And Methos prides himself on his snooping abilities.

“Did Mr. MacLeod come home last night?” Amy asks, as if reading his thoughts. She looks up at him hopefully.

“No, he didn’t,” Methos answers, watching her carefully for any reaction to the news. She’s been surprisingly distressed at MacLeod’s disappearance, but then, he’s always had a way with strays.

“I’m sure the police are handling it,” Brant says firmly as he sets a mug of coffee down in front of Methos, receiving a grin of thanks. “We just have to let them do their job and try to be available to answer any questions they may have.”

Amy rolls her eyes at Brant’s quasi-lecturing tone, but she doesn’t argue.

“Did you just come to check on Amy, Adam?” Brant asks politely.

“Primarily,” Methos answers smoothly. “And I was also hoping you could bring me along to work today at the Center. I’d like a chance to look around.”

“You think there’ll be clues about who took Mr. MacLeod?” Amy asks eagerly. Methos sees Brant frowning with disapproval out of the corner of his eye as he hovers by the coffee maker.

“Not exactly. Or at least, not anything that I’d notice. I’m not a forensics expert,” Methos says modestly. “But I know Mac fairly well. I may see something that’ll be useful for the police to know.”

“I can see how that might be a good idea,” Brant responds slowly. “You’re friends after all.” The continued emphasis of the word ‘friend’ is beginning to rankle Methos slightly. He takes a sip of coffee to wash away the slight bitterness and keeps his eyes fixed on the trace of coffee grounds clinging to Brant’s hands.

“I’ll go finish getting ready, and then we can get going” Brant continues as he triumphantly pours the last of the coffee into a travel mug. “Say fifteen minutes?” At Methos’s nod he disappears up the stairs.

“I don’t think I want to go back there,” Amy says to Methos once he’s gone. Her face has gone rather pale, and Methos can see the light freckles that pepper her nose clearly. “What if they come after me again?”

“There’s a slim possibility of that happening,” he allows. He looks her directly in the eye. “But you’re the only one who saw what happened last night. I need you to show me where it occurred. And I need someone I can trust to show me around the Center.”

Amy catches on immediately. “You don’t trust Brant?” she asks in surprise. “How come? I thought you liked him.”

“I do like him,” Methos responds truthfully. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not involved. At the moment, all I want to do is find MacLeod.”

“Or his body,” he adds a moment later. The second most likely scenario is that MacLeod is lying dead somewhere with a knife or bullet lodged in his chest, and he’ll need assistance to revive. Frankly, at this point Methos is irritated enough with MacLeod that finding his corpse may be preferable. It would give him a chance to practice his diatribe on the importance of not disappearing into thin air when one has guests.

Amy shivers at his words. “I hope he’s alright. I don’t know if I can forgive myself if something happened to him because of me.”

“If anything happens to him, it’ll be because of his inability to look after his own best interests. Not you,” Methos says dryly. Unsurprisingly, Amy doesn’t look comforted, and with an inward sigh, he continues. “Try not to worry. MacLeod is tough. He won’t go down without a fight. Probably a large one involving lots of property damage.”

This observation—equally true—proves effective, and Amy looks more optimistic when Brant comes back downstairs. He’s dressed in a pair of slacks and a green polo. It complements his eyes.

“Ready to go?” he asks them, filling a thermos with coffee with quick, economical movements.

“Always,” Methos says, letting his eyes linger momentarily on Brant’s legs. Brant blushes but smiles back at him.

**

The Brighter Days Youth Center is housed in a two-story remodeled office building that most likely dates from the 1960s, given the state of the linoleum. The new construction that Brant had mentioned—a sleek, contemporary affair that looks to be nearly three times the size of the current building—is visible across the street. There are no construction workers present, and the half-erected walls appear skeletal.

Brant is called away immediately upon arrival to deal with some crisis or another, and Methos finds himself with Amy alone as his tour guide. He prefers this. It saves him the trouble of trying to find a distraction for Brant while he pokes around. Amy thinks he’s being paranoid.

“You’re paranoid,” she says to him as soon as Brant is out of earshot. “Brant’s the nicest guy ever. That’s why I went to him for a place to crash. I don’t know what you think he’s up to, but he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

“I don’t think he’s up to anything in particular,” Methos says, eyes cataloging the Center’s layout as they amble about. “I just think he may not be as trustworthy as he appears.”

“I trust him.”

“Considering that I had a knife to your throat a little less than ten hours ago, and now you’re willingly following me around, I’m going to take that with a grain of salt.”

Amy sniffs. “Who fights with a knife anymore anyway? What, do you think you’re in West Side Story?”

“I believe their weapon of choice was synchronized dance,” Methos replies disinterestedly. “And it’s not that I think Brant specifically isn’t to be trusted. Until proven otherwise, I’m skeptical of anyone associated with the Youth Center.”

“Universal distrust?”

He grins at her widely. “Precisely.”

She considers. “So that means you don’t trust me either, do you?” Methos lets his lack of response speak for him. “Whatever. You’re a freak. I’m not taking it personally.”

Over the course of an hour, Methos is shown a rather stifling gymnasium, a large dining hall with blindingly clean floors and a set of circular tables, a handful of classrooms, and a grease-filmed commercial kitchen. Everywhere they walk, curious eyes follow them—from teenagers and staff alike—but no one approaches. Apparently Amy hadn’t been lying when she said she wasn’t close to anyone at the Center besides MacLeod.

They have only two interactions: the first with Ms. Virginia Katz, the director of the residential program, a middle-aged woman with a messy bun and a distracted, somewhat befuddled air, and the second with one of the cooks who is immediately charmed by Methos’s presumably waif-like appearance (he’s allowed his hair to grow out again, which always makes him look younger) and insists he take a bag full of chocolate chip cookies and a banana with him.

He’s munching on the banana when they come to a rather utilitarian backdoor that Methos’s internal compass states should dump them out into the alley that runs behind the building. Methos gives Amy a questioning look.

“This is the door I left from,” she confirms. She doesn’t push it open, instead continuing to stare at it bleakly, and after a moment he pushes her gently out of the way and steps outside.

The clouds are low in the sky and form a gloomy, hazy ceiling above the narrow space. It feels tight and restrictive, though it’s obvious from the tire marks on the asphalt that the alley is large enough to fit a good sized car.

“What happened exactly?” Methos asks Amy as she hesitantly steps out into the alley.

“When I came out there were two men standing there,” she replies, pointing to a spot a yard or so away from the door they’ve just walked through. Methos walks to the spot and then looks at her expectantly.

“I turned to leave,” she says, performing the motions, “when one of the men stepped forward and grabbed my arm.”

“Did you scream?”

“No, not immediately. I thought-, I don’t know what I thought. I thought maybe they were just guys, you know? Druggies maybe.”

“What happened next?” Methos asks.

“I said ‘Let go of me!’, but the man just pulled me toward the other guy. He had a really tight grip on my arm, and it hurt. That’s when I screamed.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“No. I tried to hit him with my free hand, and the other guy grabbed it and pulled it behind my back. Then the van pulled up just there,” she points to a spot a few paces away, “and they started to drag me to it. That’s when Mr. MacLeod came through the door. He must have heard me scream.”

“And he attacked the men holding you?”

“Yeah. He was really fast. He kicked one and hit the other, and they both let go. Then he told me to run, and I did.”

“Which way?”

She points south, the shortest distance out of the alley and into a seedier segment of downtown Seacouver. “That way. Away from the van.”

Methos considers the layout. It’s tight quarters. With a vehicle in here as well, Mac wouldn’t have had much ground to work with and almost none to retreat to. If one of the men had pulled a weapon, the fight would have ended quickly.

“Did you hear the sound of gunfire as you ran away?” he asks Amy. She pales at the implication of the question but shakes her head with certainty.

If the car had come into the alley from the north side, it would have come from Broadway, a fairly large and busy thoroughfare. Perhaps there will be a traffic camera video somewhere, though given the typical state of the things (perpetually out of order), Methos isn’t counting on it.

It’s obvious that Mac rushed in to play the hero and got himself in over his head. But the question remains, why was Amy targeted?

“Amy,” he begins in casual tones, “you don’t happen to come from a wealthy or powerful family do you?” Her answering snort is eloquent.

“Because I find myself wondering why a group of strangers would set up what looks to be a fairly professional kidnapping operation in order to obtain you,” he continues. Her face screws up, and he can tell that she hadn’t thought much on the question.

“I assumed they were just sickos,” she admitted. “People go missing all the time, don’t they? Snatched off the street? I thought I just happened to be in the wrong place at the worst time.”

“I suppose it’s a slim possibility,” Methos allows, “but they were waiting for you directly in front of the back door. Even if they weren’t targeting you specifically, they were definitely using the Youth Center as a hunting ground.”

She shudders. “Have they been watching us, do you think? That’s just so creepy.”

“Oh, definitely,” he answers with certainty. “Did anyone know you were staying late last night?”

Amy begins shaking her head before he finishes asking the question. “No, I didn’t tell anyone. I wasn’t even planning on it. I just got caught up on a paper I’ve been working on.”

“A paper?”

“I’m taking some night classes at the high school,” she replies defensively, though his tone had been merely questioning. “I want to get my GED. You have a problem with that?”

Methos doesn’t bother responding. “Have any other kids from the Center gone missing?”

“Well, sure, most people leave after a little while. They travel to other cities, they go home, they camp out somewhere. It’s not like any of us have a home here.”

“But have any other kids disappeared under unusual circumstances? Are there any you would have expected to hear something about but haven’t?”

Amy pauses while she considers the question. “A handful, I guess, but it’s hard to say. I haven’t been staying at the Center all that long. Maybe a month or two. And I stick to myself, so I don’t really know anyone that well.”

“Have you noticed anyone else at the Center who seems particularly close to MacLeod?”

“Everyone seems to like him. Like I said, he’s a nice guy.”

“Undoubtedly. But is there anyone you can think of—teenager or employee—who may have gone to him for help the way you did?”

“I don’t know,” she says. Her voice is picking up a tinge of anguish, and Methos sighs inwardly. Young people are terrible about taking on guilt they have no reason to shoulder.

“That’s fine,” he reassures her. “I don’t expect to find MacLeod through your answers alone. I was just hoping you could provide some perspective about how the Youth Center operates.”

Amy’s hands are clenched into fists—a nervous habit it seems—as she tries to stare him down. It’s a fruitless endeavor on her part. He hasn’t lost a staring contest (when he chooses to participate at any rate) in millennia. She drops her eyes and kicks at a bit of trash on the ground.

“I just feel so useless,” she murmurs. He pretends not to hear her.

“You haven’t been here very long. Can you think of anyone familiar with the Center and its clients that we could talk to? Someone who would be willing to answer questions at least somewhat truthfully.”

“I don’t-, I just don’t know who we could trust not to go immediately to Brant,” she says. “And you said you don’t think we should trust him.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised you’re putting so much stock in that. And I’m at a loss to understand why you’re trusting _me_ ,” he says honestly, watching her reaction carefully.

She doesn’t react except to shrug slightly, already looking bored with the topic. “I want Mr. MacLeod to be found, and you seem capable. More capable than Brant anyway. He doesn’t know how to use a letter opener much less a knife.”

“That’s an absurd reason,” he tells her, and she grins.

“And I trust Mr. MacLeod,” she continues. “I think that he’d want me to help his _lover_ find him.”

Now it’s her turn to watch him for a reaction. Her face turns slightly to disappointment when she fails to throw him, and Methos is glad he has enough control over his expression to keep the small turn-over his heart had just executed from showing.

“Right,” he says, refusing to confirm or deny her theory. He moves to get the conversation back on topic. “As it happens, I think you do know someone who would be in a position to comment on the goings-on here at the Center without then talking to Brant about our questions.”

Her eyebrow rises in incredulity. “Oh really? Who?”

“One of the officers last night said that this area is notorious for illegal drugs.”

“And?” Her face is wary now.

“And most areas notorious for illegal drugs have a resident that is equally notorious for selling them.”

She doesn’t respond this time, but her eyes are thoughtful.

“I would be willing to bet,” he continues, “that there’s a single entity that sees to all of the Center’s drug needs. And that that person is also well acquainted with the daily comings and goings.”

“You want to talk to Grey,” Amy says. She doesn’t look particularly enamored with the idea.

“I do indeed,” Methos replies. “I’ve found that criminals with strong business interests in a given area or in a given group of people are frequently very well-informed. He may be able to help us.”

“He’s a scumbag,” she replies flatly. “He sells drugs to kids. He doesn’t care that he’s ruining their lives.”

“I’d be happy to let you get into a philosophical debate with the man after we have a chance to ask him what he knows about any potential kidnappings.”

She holds out another minute before giving in with a sigh. “Okay, fine. I’ll show you where he’s supposed to be. I’ve never met him myself, but my first night at the Center I was told where to find him. In case I needed a ‘little something to make me feel settled.’” The quotation is obvious in her disgusted inflection.

“This will probably be really dangerous,” Amy says after a momentary pause.

Methos claps his hands together. “Excellent. Lead the way.”

**

Grey reminds Methos immediately and intensely of Byron: thin, pale, and disaffected, though where Byron was dark-haired, Grey’s hair is dishwater blonde with bangs that fall carelessly across his forehead. Methos thinks that were he to cut the man, his blood would be a pale pinkish hue rather than ruby.

He blames the raising of Byron’s memory for the violent imagery as well.

Amy and Methos had no trouble gaining entry to Grey’s receiving room (Methos has no doubt the drug dealer sees the office in the dilapidated building as such). Two bodyguards are arranged on shabby furniture in the room while a third stands outside. All three wear firearms tucked obviously into their belts, and it seems unlikely that Grey sees many people foolish or desperate enough to be willing to make trouble with such a set-up.

Grey looks Methos up and down from where he sits reclined in an antique wooden office chair. “Heroin.”

Methos raises an eyebrow questioningly.

Grey smirks. “I can always tell a man’s drug of choice. You like horse.”

In fact, Methos had been an ardent admirer of heroin for a time in the early twentieth century, though he had sworn off the drug after a particularly memorable night that ended with him naked in the Thames swimming after his sword with another Immortal pacing him on the bank.

“You’re very talented,” Methos tells him, and Grey bows his head ironically at the compliment, smirking all the while.

“But you’re not here to conduct a business transaction, are you?” the drug dealer asks him. Grey’s eyes flick meaningfully to Amy, whose lips are pursed in resolute disapproval of the entire situation.

“We’re not here to purchase drugs, no, but I think we can still negotiate a favorable exchange of goods for money,” Methos tells him.

“To which goods are you referring?”

“Information.”

“Ah,” Grey says. He quirks his lips ironically and tilts his head, a move that Byron had done so frequently that for just an instant, Methos feels something catch in his chest.

“I have to say, Mr.-?

“Byron,” Methos replies blandly, and Grey’s eyes crinkle in amusement.

“I have to say, Mr. Byron, that in a business like mine, one does not as a habit go around disclosing facts to unknown parties.”

“We have no interest in your business concerns,” Methos says, maintaining eye contact with the man. “We’re here looking for any information you can give us about the Brighter Days Youth Center.”

Grey’s eyebrow rises slowly in artful surprise. “The Brighter Days Youth Center, you say? I don’t mean to be rude, but wouldn’t you be better served by visiting their office? It’s very near here. I imagine they have all number of pamphlets.”

“Our interests deal more with the other side of the Center. Specifically, the back of it, where the door opens up to the alley off of Broadway.”

“The alley? You don’t say.” Grey’s eyes glitter. “And why would you be looking for information about this alley?”

“Because someone tried to grab me from it yesterday,” Amy blurts. Methos had asked her to let him do the talking during their walk over, but he hadn’t really expected her to follow his lead. He supposes he’s lucky she was silent for this long.

“Oh?” Grey queries politely. “That’s unfortunate.” Amy flushes in irritation at his bland expression, and Methos reclaims the lead before she can make a hash of things.

“Your office,” he doesn’t allow his tone or face to express irony at the term, “is fortunate enough to have an excellent view of the alley behind the Youth Center. We were hoping you or one of your employees might have seen something there last night.”

“Something in particular?” Grey queries.

“Something out of the ordinary,” Methos says blandly, face calm and composed.

Grey considers them both for a long moment. Methos can clearly see the instant he decides on obstinacy.

“Neither I nor my people make it a point of peering out windows at all hours,” Grey says airily. His face is bored. “I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Byron.”

Methos decides to try one last tack. “As a businessman, it is in your best interest to keep track of your customers. Have you noticed any of them going missing?”

Grey is studying his fingernails. “I may have heard rumor of a few young things disappearing off the radar.”

“What are their names?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I make it a point to never ask for names.”

“But you believe their disappearances are suspicious?”

Grey sighs theatrically. “People come and go from this area all the time. But they never truly leave. If they’ve purchased my product once, they always make their way back at some point. Often in a very desperate state.”

“That’s because your product is an addictive poison,” Amy bites out viciously, and Methos mentally vows to come up with a ‘shut the hell up’ hand signal of some sort for future interviews.

Grey scowls at her. “I provide a supply to the demand that already exists. I’m not responsible for putting it there.”

“How many of your customers are missing?” Methos tries again to get this meeting back on track, but he can see that Grey has made up his mind to be offended.

“I forget,” the drug dealer says, eyes narrowing. He shoots a glance toward Amy that is gleefully malicious. “But it’s only the pretty ones that aren’t coming back.”

The chance to obtain useful information has passed. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” Methos says. He reaches very slowly for his wallet, watched all the while by the two bodyguards. He pulls out a fifty and Grey laughs, an eerily childish giggle. A second fifty joins it, and Grey motions to the bare expanse of desk in front of him.

For a moment, Methos thinks there may be trouble anyway, but the drug dealer simply waves them out of the room as he picks up the bills. They go, and Amy is smart enough (this time) to remain silent until they’re back on the street within sight of passerbys.

“I feel dirty,” she says, mouth forming a moue of revulsion. “I don’t know how you managed to talk to him like you did. I didn’t even like being in the same room as him.”

“He’s not so bad,” Methos replies. He’s certainly known worse. Grey the Drug Dealer is a small-scale amateur.

“I’m going back to Mac’s place to check up on a few things,” he tells Amy. “Will you be alright going back to the Center to get a ride with Brant?”

“I’m not going back there!” she protests immediately. “You think that someone’s after me and that he may be part of it. I’m not an idiot!”

“Even if Brant is involved, he wouldn’t try anything so long as people know you’re staying with him. Besides, what makes you think I’m interested in playing babysitter?” he asks her bluntly.

She looks at him mulishly. “You can’t stop me. If you send me back to the Center or to Brant’s house or anywhere else, I’ll just take a bus to the boat. I’m sticking with you. At least I know _you’re_ trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“Brant will wonder where you are.”

“Let him wonder. I’m eighteen. I can go where I like.”

“You aren’t staying with me.”

“You can’t just leave me to get kidnapped! Again!”

“You weren’t kidnapped the first time.”

“Only cause Mr. MacLeod was there. Please? Adam? Let me stay just one night.” Her tone goes beseeching, and widens her eyes pleadingly. Methos is abruptly reminded of Alexa. Damnit.

“I snore,” he lies threateningly.

“So do I,” she returns.

Methos throws up his hands. “Fine. You’re on the couch.”

“Fine,” she growls back.

They glare at each other a moment longer before Methos turns to signal a cab. Upon reflection, he supposes he’d rather keep her nearby until MacLeod is found. She’s the only real lead he has. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

Amy is standing beside him as the taxi pulls up to the curb. She’s smiling slightly. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

**

When they arrive back at the houseboat, Methos settles down in front of a computer for a stint of hacking while Amy throws herself into making dinner with a zeal that he finds borderline worrisome.

“Son of a bitch!” she yelps, followed immediately by a loud clanging as the second of Mac’s All Clad pans falls to the floor. It’s the third curse in as many minutes. Methos finds the whole thing strangely domestic.

“Where’s the baking soda?” her cranky question floats to him from the kitchen.

“Try in the freezer,” he calls to her as he pulls up Brighter Day’s financial records. His only response is a murmured grumble.

Brighter Days Center began in 1991 as a non-profit agency run by Grace Delaney and a staff of three operating out of rented space in a community center. In 1993, the non-profit merged with another agency, Charitable Hearts, an organization primarily concerned with fund-raising through grant writing, fund appeals, and the solicitation of donations from private citizens. The second iteration of Brighter Days purchased the building it is currently housed in and had been slowly growing ever since.

In 1995, Grace Delaney had retired and been replaced by her project director Mitch Landers. After a short stint as Executive Director, Landers had abruptly left the position in 1996 and the leadership of Brighter Days had been placed in the hands of a Board of Directors made up primarily of top donors and key business leaders in Seacouver.

The Chair of the Board as of 1998 is a man named Bruce Leander, a mid-level Mob boss.

The records don’t state this, of course, but it takes very little digging for Methos to discover that Leander’s corporation—Leander-Mallowitz, where Leander has been CEO for the last decade—has been investigated by several white collar crimes’ units for money laundering and fraud. Bruce Leander himself has a police record that includes convictions for illegal gambling and fight fixing and suspicion of involvement in the provision of illegal drugs and prostitution. After a five-year stint in prison in the early 1990s, his record is clean, and Methos wonders if Leander was lucky enough to be assigned a cellmate who taught him the finer points of hiding one’s crimes from the authorities.

It appears Leander had been appointed as Chair of the Brighter Days Board due to being responsible for the largest amount of donations. In 1998, Leander-Mallowitz’s corporate donation arm had begun annual contributions to the Youth Center in unprecedented amounts, culminating in 2000 in a donation of $1.3 million to build the new residential facility that Brant had mentioned.

Methos leans back in his chair and ponders the information he’s managed to glean thus far. After about thirty seconds of this, he decides he’ll ponder much more effectively with a bottle of beer in hand, and wonders if Amy would be willing to pass herself off as twenty-one (honestly, the American legal drinking age is laughable) in order to zip down to the liquor store to fetch him a decent brew.

Before he can ask her, there’s a knock at the door.

Brant is standing outside and smiles tiredly at Methos as he swings the door open. At some point during the day he’s changed into a suit. It’s a couple of years out of fashion, but it fits him well, and he’s loosened the tie and collar enough that the overall effect is rakish and charmingly rumpled.

“I wasn’t expecting a present,” Methos says before he can think about it. Brant’s answering smile is slow and broad.

“Those are the best kind,” Brant responds lowly, eyes warm. Then he straightens with a small sigh, and the smile drops from his lips. “I’m looking for Amy. Is she here?”

“You’ll find her in the kitchen wrestling with the pots and pans,” Methos says. He opens the door wide in invitation, and Brant steps in, looking around the space with undisguised curiosity. His eyes linger for a beat longer on the single bed before he moves into the small galley kitchen to join Amy.

She’s sucking at a burned finger and glaring at a charred…something that’s resting in a slightly smoking pan. She transfers the glare to the two men as they approach, and Methos, having unmatched self-preservation instincts, reverses immediately.

“Pizza?” he asks casually, picking up Mac’s phone.

“No pepperoni,” she calls to him continuing to glower at Brant who is looking at her with a disapproving slant to his mouth.

Brant speaks quietly, but the acoustics of the houseboat aren’t made for sound suppression, and Methos is able to hear them both clearly as he places his delivery order.

“I’m not going back with you,” Amy tells Brant, jaw set stubbornly.

“Amy, this really isn’t appropriate,” Brant replies gently.

“Why not?”

“You don’t know this man, and he’s much older than you. Staying with him alone wouldn’t be safe. I thought I taught you to make better decisions than that.” Brant is speaking softly to maintain at least the façade of privacy.

Amy snorts, and her voice when she replies is above its normal volume. “Oh please, he’s not that much older than me. And you’re not exactly in a position to throw stones. I’ve seen how you look at him.” Methos can almost hear Brant’s flush at the insinuation. “And anyway, it’s not like that. I’ll be taking the couch.”

“It’s still not something I can stand by in good conscience and let happen.” Brant is beginning to sound slightly irritated.

“You’re not going to _let_ anything happen. I’m an adult. I can stay where I like and with whoever I like,” Amy says, equally annoyed.

“As long as you’re a resident at Brighter Days, I have an obligation to look after you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly a ‘resident’ at the moment, am I?”

Methos clears his throat pointedly as he hangs up, feeling nostalgia for the days where slamming a phone into its cradle could be used to signify the end of a call. The polite beep when he hits the End button on the wireless handheld Mac installed isn’t nearly so satisfying.

With his entry into the argument, Brant switches tactics. “You’re absolutely right that I can’t make you come back with me. You’re an adult, and as long as Adam says you can stay, it’s out of my hands.” He narrows his eyes in Methos’s direction to make it clear how he feels about Methos’s role in supporting Amy’s rebellion. Methos just smiles at him.

“However,” Brant continues firmly, “it goes completely against my conscience to leave you here with a virtual stranger. In order to fulfill my responsibility and make certain that nothing happens to you, I’d like to stay the night as well. With Adam’s permission, of course.” Brant’s voice becomes tentative as he realizes that Methos has given no such invitation, reciprocal and silent flirting notwithstanding.

Methos looks at him steadily. Brant’s face is imploring, but his eyes are more difficult to interpret.

“Of course you can stay,” Methos says. “Far be it for me to separate a social worker and his charge.”

“Oh you can’t be serious!” Amy says. “You want to be my chaperone? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”

“I only have your interests in mind,” Brant replies stiffly. Amy looks at him with blatant skepticism.

“Yeah right.”

Rather than continue the verbal sparring, Brant apparently decides to take the permission to stay as a victory and withdraws from the argument by moving to the desk and peering at the laptop Methos has been working on.

Methos gently closes the lid.

“Well,” Methos says genially. “How about a game of cards while we wait for the food to arrive?”

**

Brant has a terrible poker face, and Amy is unable to hold Methos’s gaze when she’s bluffing. It’s basically a slaughter, and by the time the pizza is delivered, Methos has collected almost all of the chips.

They’re approximately halfway through the box of pizza—set on the kitchen table alongside a bottle of Mac’s Red Bordeaux in lieu of beer—when Methos’s cell phone rings.

It’s Joe. And he’s angry.

“What the _hell_ is going on down there?” the Watcher asks, not yelling, but well above his typical volume. “I’m just got word of a missing persons report filed with Seacouver PD for a certain Scotsman of our acquaintance.”

“Just now?” Methos asks. “Your intelligence network is slipping.” Brant raises an eyebrow at the conversation, and Amy doesn’t even pretend not to be listening. Methos gives them an apologetic wave before slipping into the bathroom and gently shutting the door.

“Furthermore,” Joe continues, ignoring his comment, “Mac’s Watcher is reporting that, though there’s no sign of Mac, there’s a tall skinny guy with a big nose and a teenage girl camping out on his boat. There something you want to tell me?”

“I’m in Seacouver?” Methos offers innocently.

“Yeah, somehow I managed to deduce that.” Joe’s voice is wry. “We’ll leave the fact that you randomly hopped continents until later. Where’s Mac?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_?”

“I’m working on it. Why didn’t his Watcher report him missing earlier?” Methos asks. It’s something he’d been wondering since the night before.

“You know Mac is deemed ‘stable,’” Joe says tiredly. “We decided he didn’t need constant surveillance unless we got word of another Immortal in the area. We needed the resources elsewhere.”

“I suppose it’s tough economic times for all of us,” Methos props his hip against the pedestal sink as he gives his flip reply and studies his profile in the mirror. His nose honestly isn’t that large. He doesn’t know why he catches so much flak for it.

“So what’s the deal, Adam?” Joe asks, tone abruptly going serious. Methos has never told him, but he enjoys being called ‘Adam.’ It reminds him of his early years in the Watchers. Simpler years. Before Don was killed and Methos was put on a colliding trajectory with an exasperating and all-too compelling Scotsman.

“Adam?”

“Sorry, Joe,” Methos says, shaking off his momentary reverie. “I’m still looking into, but it seems that Mac got himself kidnapped last night.”

“ _Kidnapped_?”

“You really need to stop repeating me. Or he could have been killed, I suppose. But if he was killed, he hasn’t recovered yet, and his body hasn’t been found. I’m operating on the assumption that he’s being held somewhere.”

Joe’s voice is hushed. “Do you think someone found out what he was?”

Methos suppresses a chill at the thought. “It seems most likely that he was kept for a different purpose altogether. The original target of the kidnapping, that teenage girl your Watcher reported, is a resident of a Youth Center that Mac’s been volunteering at. He’s also a major donor. It’s entirely possible he’s been kidnapped for monetary reasons or for some knowledge that he has.”

“Has there been any sort of ransom demand?”

“Not yet,” Methos replies, knowing as well as Joe what a lack of such demands could mean. “But it’s only been 24 hours so far. It’s also possible that whoever took him is trying to coerce him into transferring the money himself using his codes and passwords. Or it might not have to do with money at all. Just to be safe, though, could you have someone monitor Mac’s bank accounts?”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem. It’s standard practice when an Immortal goes missing anyway.” Joe pauses for a moment. “You need anything else?” The Watcher is speaking carefully, as he always does when he feels torn between his friendship with MacLeod and his job as an impartial chronicler. As always, friendship wins out, and Methos feels his lips twitch upward.

“Actually, yes,” Methos confirms. “Would you be able to forward me a copy of Mac’s Watcher’s notes from the last week or two?”

“I already told you he didn’t see anything. He was on a different assignment yesterday.”

“I know, but I think someone else was taken yesterday besides Mac,” Methos explains. “There was some fresh blood on the deck when I got here last night, and according to the girl who witnessed it all, Mac would already have been captured by that point. It must have been somebody else’s.”

“So what do you think happened?” Joe asks.

“Well, either someone entirely unrelated to MacLeod managed to blunder onto the deck of the boat and cut themselves, or someone came to MacLeod for help and was removed from the houseboat by force after the kidnappers had Mac in custody.”

“Are there any signs of a struggle? Lock smashed?” Methos isn’t surprised that Joe is proving to be an excellent sounding board.

“No, just the blood. It didn’t even look as though the lock were picked.”

“So either the kidnappers had a key or the mysterious second victim let them in,” Joe muses.

“Or whoever it was was grabbed from the deck of the boat itself and there was never any need for the kidnappers to go inside at all,” Methos adds.

“What’s your game plan?”

“At the moment? Poking with my proboscis and seeking what falls out.”

“Given the size of the instrument in question, I’m sure you’ll have results in no time.”

“You’re just jealous,” Methos says.

He hears Joe call out “Be careful, Old Man,” just before he disconnects.

When Methos exits the bathroom, Amy falls to the floor from where she had been squatting against the door. He steps over her and rejoins Brant at the table.

“You’d better have saved me some slices with olives,” Methos says as he reseats himself.

“Who were you talking to? You think someone else was taken with Mr. MacLeod? Where did you see blood?” Amy comes over in a rush, eyes wide and excited. Methos thinks that with the distance of a night of rest and several meals, she’s begun to see the event as an adventure. Or a mystery novel.

“Blood?” Brant asks sharply. “Where did you see blood? Did you call the police?”

Methos bites leisurely into another slice of pizza as he weighs the risks and advantages of speaking truthfully versus creating a convenient falsehood. As is typical, he settles for a mixture of both.

“When I got here last night, I saw what looked like a small amount of blood outside near the boat. I assumed that a pedestrian had fallen and scraped their knee or something. I didn’t start thinking maybe there was more to it until I heard Amy’s story.”

“Do you think we should report it?” Amy’s tone is dubious, her reluctance for another encounter with the police entirely evident.

“I don’t think there’s much point,” Methos replies. “There was only a little bit there, not enough to prove any sort of major injury. And I’m sure the rain last night washed it away entirely, so there won’t be anything left to show the police anyway.”

Amy still looks torn, but Brant nods. “I think you’re right,” he says. “We don’t even know that it has anything to do at all with Mr. MacLeod going missing. It was probably, as you said, the result of someone slipping on the walkway outside.”

Methos smiles at him and sips his wine. “Quite.”

“I guess,” Amy says doubtfully. “I just don’t want Mr. MacLeod to get hurt because we decide something isn’t important when it actually is, ya know?”

“How about this,” Methos says, trying to placate her. He doesn’t want to talk to the police again if he can avoid it. Once per crime was enough, thank you. “Tomorrow evening, it will have been just about 48 hours since the police were notified that Mac went missing under suspicious circumstances. We’ll check in with the detectives then and see if they’ve made any progress. If not, we’ll mention the blood, though hopefully they’ll have found Mac by then, and we won’t need to call them at all.”

“Why 48 hours?” Amy asks, looking confused.

“It’s the average amount of time for a break in missing person’s cases,” Methos lies. He has no idea what the statistic actually is, but 48 hours sounds plausible.

“Okay, I guess that sounds alright,” she says before yawning. Brant had insisted she not be given wine, but judging from the stain on her lips, she’d found a way to sneak some anyway.

“Couch,” Methos reminds her, motioning in the general direction of the linen closet. It doesn’t take long before her deep, even breaths drift from the couch.

Methos had expected Brant to make a move—of either a criminal or personal nature—once Amy was asleep, but instead he sits quietly for over an hour, idly flipping through Mac’s history books, until Methos feels the need to comment.

“Personally, I don’t buy into the idea of a collective unconscious.”

Brant looks up, startled. “What?”

Methos nods toward the book Brant is holding, a biography of Carl Jung, and Brant looks down at it. “Oh, right,” Brant says, as though he had only just realized what he was reading.

“Though he did have some interesting things to say on the interpretation of dreams,” Methos continues, watching the other man closely.

Apparently lost in thought, Brant only makes a noncommittal sound in response. His gaze is distant and distracted as he moves his eyes from the book to Methos, but then it sharpens.

Brant had untied his tie completely during the evening, and the tails of it drape over his shoulders. The buttons on his collar are undone, and the clean line of his collarbone is visible in the dim light of the reading lamp.

Methos allows his face to display his appreciation for the sight, and Brant walks toward where Methos is sitting at the computer desk. His hand lightly brushes Methos’s cheekbone before drifting down his neck.

Methos doesn’t lean into the caress, but it’s a near thing.

“Thank you for trusting me enough to let me stay here.” Brant keeps his voice low as his hand settles on Methos’s shoulder and squeezes lightly.

“To be honest, it’s not so much as I trust you not to try anything as it is that I trust my ability to handle your attempts,” Methos says, looking up at the other man from underneath his eyelashes. It’s a look that he is well aware suits him, and Brant draws in a breath.

“And what do you think I’ll try, Adam?” Brant’s tone is husky and his pupils are dilated, and Methos feels an answering heat trying to rise up inside of him.

He suppresses it.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he answers, keeping his voice light and flirtatious. “That’s why I decided to take a chance.”

Brant chuckles and uses his index finger to rub lightly up and down the edge of Methos’s neck. It tickles and raises goose bumps along Methos’s arms. Unsurprisingly, his neck has always been sensitive.

Brant looks toward the bed, a thoughtful—and hungry—expression on his face. “Do you think your friend would mind if I joined you on that tonight? It’s big enough for the both of us, and it looks much more comfortable than the recliner,” the social worker says suggestively.

At the mention of the bed—which is as comfortable as Brant guesses and which smells so strongly of MacLeod—Methos feels his arousal shatter. He stands, and Brant’s hand falls to his side.

“You take it,” Methos says kindly. “You’ve had a long day, and you couldn’t have gotten much sleep last night with Amy dropping by. I’ll be fine on the chair.”

Brant blinks in surprise, but his eyes shift to the slumbering teenager as he remembers that they’re not alone. “Ah, that’s very kind of you, but I couldn’t possibly put you out. I’ll take the chair.”

“No, no, I insist,” Methos says. “I’ll be up for a while yet anyway. Jet lag.”

“When you put it so emphatically, it would be ungracious of me to decline,” Brant says in forced cheer. His eyes are disappointed. “Thank you.”

The social worker strips off his tie completely as he walks to the bed and begins to unbutton his shirt. He looks at Methos hesitantly over his shoulder. “Don’t hesitate to wake me if you end up wanting to switch places.”

“I’ll keep your offer in mind,” Methos replies, “but I’m certain I’ll be fine. Good night.”

Brant takes it as the conversation ender it is and is silent as he finishes undressing and climbs into bed. Methos is glad for the added distance. As much fun as their flirtation is (and it is always fun to find a willing partner), he needs to focus if he’s going to have any hope of finding Mac.

It doesn’t stop him from watching the shifting muscles of Brant’s back as he removes his shirt.


	3. Life Is Real

**Life is Real**  
Guilt stains on my pillow  
Blood on my terraces  
Torsos in my closet  
Shadows from my past  
Life is real  
Life is real  
Life is real, so real  
Sleeping is my leisure  
Waking up in a minefield  
Dream is just a pleasure dome  
Love is a roulette wheel

 

Despite citing jet lag, Methos hadn’t actually intended to stay up much longer after Brant was asleep. He’s found all he can through the computer, and any further investigation will need to wait until business hours.

Nevertheless, he finds himself sitting awake in the desk chair for some time. He has switched off the desk lamp, and the only light in the room is that which manages to seep through the curtains from the streetlight outside.

Amy had referred to him as Mac’s ‘lover’ in a clumsy stab to elicit information, and he finds that the term is still echoing in his mind.

In fact, he and Mac have never been lovers. At least, not in the sense that Amy had meant. Methos supposes that in the frequently platonic, Victorian sense of the word, the term may apply. He had certainly gone out of his way time and again to court the Highlander, gifting him with companionship, protection, and advice. And a compilation of Queen’s greatest hits on one memorable Christmas, not that Mac had appreciated the gesture. Philistine.

For several years after their first meeting, Methos had expected a physical relationship to begin at some point: Mac would finally take his propensity for manhandling up a level or Methos would pin Mac during one of their sparring sessions and take the plunge. Kissing would be involved, followed quickly by nakedness and other, more erotic, sports.

Except that it had never happened. Though very slightly put out by Mac’s continued obliviousness, Methos had taken comfort in the glances the younger had occasionally given him when he thought Methos wasn’t looking: frequently confounded and sometimes paired with a smoldering heat that left MacLeod blushing when he caught himself. It was adorable, really. Methos wishes sometimes he still had the capacity to blush without consciously directing himself to do so.

Then Kronos had shown up, followed too quickly by Byron and the Ahriman incident (what a mess that had been), and by the end of it all, Methos was lucky if MacLeod made eye contact with him at all.

Methos had bided his time. If there was one thing he was good at—besides beating the odds and beer appraisal—it was patience. Mac’s move to Seacouver had been a hitch, as expected as it had been, but it is only recently that Methos has begun to wonder if it might not be better for him to move along. A decade is only a blip on the radar in an Immortal lifetime, but he can’t help but feel that in this instance, living in limbo is worse than the possibility of final rejection on Mac’s part. Or of finally letting go on Methos’s. Not that anything is truly ‘final’ in an Immortal’s lifetime, save decapitation. But he’s digressing.

He suddenly and poignantly misses Byron. His run-in with Grey the Drug Dealer had raised the specter of his friend and occasional bed companion, and the intensity of his memory is pervasive in the darkened room.

Byron would have laughed at him and told him to stop his pathetic mooning and moaning and arrange himself like a gift in MacLeod’s bed, which he had already tried with unsatisfactory results, so it is unlikely that having Byron alive and at his side now would be useful in a practical sense. Poor advice aside, it would have been nice to hear Byron expound once again on the subjects of love and lust.

Above all, Methos muses, he misses Byron’s passion: his overwhelming thirst for the wealth of experiences and indulgences that life had to offer. It had faded with time, of course, as all fires are eventually banked, but for a while, it had been an inspiring glow to bask in.

He exhales deeply and forces his eyes to shut. Sitting in the dark and searching the shadows for ghosts of times past will do nothing more than leave him weary and snappish in the morning.

He’s always been excellent at compartmentalizing when he puts his mind to it. Sleep comes quickly.

**

It’s a dream he’s had many times before, though the details vary depending on the time and place he finds himself in.

He’s standing, pressed against something soft behind him (a bed?). He’s not bound, but his arms are pulled straight up above him, stretching his body into a taut line. There is no pain or discomfort.

He seems to be wearing a black toga (he frequently finds himself in a toga in his dreams, so even in the haze of dream logic, he dismisses this as unimportant), but the hem is too short and just flirts with the very top of his leg. Cool air currents move sinuously about the space, slipping beneath the toga and gliding over his body in random patterns.

He’s not alone. A deep, masculine chuckle—a sound of satisfaction—comes from somewhere behind him, and a moment later he feels the warmth of another body close to his own.

Hot breaths stir the fine hairs on the nape of his neck as the man moves closer, and suddenly he’s not leaning against a bed at all, but is rather reclined against a broad, firm chest. A hand cradles his right hip, the thumb running sensually against his skin.

He shivers, and his unseen companion laughs again.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” the man whispers. Despite their proximity, the voice is somehow distorted by the air currents whipping playfully about the room, and Methos is unable to identify any accent the speaker may possess.

“Relax,” the voice orders him gently. The fingers of the hand that holds him are callused, and as they drift over Methos’s skin, they raise a burning heat in their wake. He tries to pull away, but the hand tightens.

“Trust me,” the man whispers.

“I can’t,” Methos gasps, pulling against the grip more urgently now. The air currents have gotten dramatically colder, and the heat of the man holding him sears all the more deeply in counterpoint.

“Let go,” comes the voice. Methos opens his eyes (when did he close them?) to see that he’s standing at the edge of a bottomless precipice. Inky blackness flows endlessly, eagerly, into the abyss.

Methos tilts—under his own power or through the movements of the man behind him, he is unable to tell—and the hand begins to loosen.

“No,” Methos says urgently. Begs, really. “Please, don’t.”

There’s no answer, and the heat that had been at his back has disappeared leaving only cold blackness in its stead.

“Don’t let me go,” he says. But there’s no one to hear him.

He falls.

**

Methos is awoken abruptly at some dark point in the wee hours of the morning. The soft scuffing sound comes again, and he lies still, keeping his breathing steady. A shadow shifts past the window in the corner of his vision. Brant.

“You didn’t end up deciding the chair would be a better sleeping venue the bed, did you?” Methos whispers. He smiles at the resulting startled jump. “If so, I may have to reassess your taste level.”

“Sorry,” Brant’s voice whispers from the dark. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to get a drink of water.”

“Sleeping can be thirsty work.”

Brant huffs out a soft laugh. “I had a nightmare. It’s silly, but my mom always used to give me a glass of water when I woke up as a kid. I know it’s just the association with childhood and comfort, but it always seems to help.”

“What was your nightmare about?” Methos asks, his voice as soft as Brant’s. Amy’s deep breaths continue uninterrupted from the couch.

Brant hesitates for a beat. “You, actually.” Methos can hear the honesty in his voice.

“I’m not sure how to take that.”

“You getting hurt. You and Amy both,” Brant hurries to clarify. “And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“You’re not responsible for my wellbeing.”

“I know that,” Brant assures him. “It’s just, well…” Methos can almost hear the shrug in the dark. “It’s probably just my mind expressing the confusion and worry I’m feeling about Mr. MacLeod’s disappearance. That’s all.”

“Probably,” Methos agrees. Brant continues to the kitchen and returns to the bed with his glass of water. His footfalls are almost silent on the restored wooden floor.

“Adam, do you ever have nightmares?” Brant whispers once he’s resettled. Methos hears him shift about on the linens as he rolls to face the chair.

“Frequently.”

“If you wanted-, that is, if you ever felt comfortable, I’d like to listen to you talk about them.” Brant’s voice is uncertain, and unexpectedly, it raises a similar emotion in Methos. Ordinarily he would reply with the expected polite deflection and then think no more of it, but his memories are roiling, and the room—despite the fact that he has never known it another way—feels empty without Mac’s Presence.

He’s so tired of waiting. Of being relegated to the emptiness of space in orbit around a gravitational center that may never pull him closer.

“Maybe,” Methos replies. It has taken him several minutes to voice this vague and unusually honest response, and there is no answer from bed beyond rhythmic breathing.

He uses the sound to center himself as he falls back asleep.

**

The next morning begins with Queen.

Amy stumbles off the couch and lunges for the volume button on the stereo. “What the _hell_ is this racket?” she asks, blinking bleary eyes at the high-end audio system. Say what he will about MacLeod’s resistance to change, the man is always willing to splurge on musical devices.

“Show some respect,” Methos says casually from the computer desk as he nurses a cup of fresh coffee. “Queen has influenced musicians for generations.”

Methos has already been up for an hour. When the teenager had continued to doze the morning away, he’d eventually run out of patience and—upon spotting the disco album he’d gifted Mac—had decided an incentive to wake was in order. Frankly, Methos is rather surprised the other man had kept the gift, but he’d immediately put it to the best possible use. Strategy is a talent.

“Yeah, by driving them in the opposite direction,” Amy mutters, stumbling toward the coffee maker. Methos ignores the dig. Clearly, the girl isn’t a morning person.

“Where’s Brant?” she asks, as the caffeine penetrates her system enough for her to notice the third member of their party is no longer present.

“He left for work half an hour ago,” Methos says distractedly as he scrolls through the pages open on the browser. The social worker had slipped quietly into the bathroom for a quick shower and then even more quietly out the door with a hurried, whispered conversation to Methos to explain that he needed to run home for fresh clothes.

Brant had also said that he’d see him later, and would Methos happen to be interested in joining him for lunch? Only if he’s in the neighborhood, of course. But Methos doesn’t feel the need to relay this to Amy.

She grunts as she plops down on the desk and looks at him avidly. “So what’s the plan?”

“What makes you think I have one?” he asks her in dry amusement.

“You seem like the type to make plans,” she says solemnly. “Very…plotty.”

“I am rather plotty,” Methos agrees. He turns the laptop so that Amy can see the screen and points. “Do you recognize him?”

Her eyes squint and then widen immediately in recognition. “That’s Trent!” she exclaims. Her face tightens as she digests the content of the news story. “Oh god, he’s dead?”

“His body was found this morning washed up at a loading dock,” Methos says. He’s already read the article. “They’re not calling it murder, but they’re asking for any information the public can provide, which is pretty much the same thing as coming out and calling the death suspicious.”

Amy’s mouth is downturned in sadness. “He was a nice guy. A part-time clerical assistant at the Center for Ms. Katz, the residential program director.”

“Did he know MacLeod at all?”

She frowns in confusion. “I didn’t think so, but Mr. MacLeod seemed to get along with everyone. It wouldn’t surprise me if he knew him.” Her eyes suddenly sharpen. “Do you think he’s the one whose blood you found?”

“I think it seems probable,” Methos allows cautiously. MacLeod’s Watcher report—emailed last night courtesy of Joe—detail meetings with a man that fits Trent Mitter’s description over the last week. It seems unlikely at this point that Amy is involved in Mac’s continued disappearance, but he still doesn’t entirely trust her. Young and female does not always equate to innocent. “It seems too much of a coincidence for Mac to go missing and this clerical assistant to die on the same night, don’t you think?”

“So what are we going to do?”

“How do you feel about B and E for information-gathering purposes?”

Amy’s eyes widen. “Oooh, this is getting exciting.”

“I think you’ll be less excited once we get there,” Methos says, smiling secretively.

**

“You want to go dumpster diving?” Amy asks flatly. They’re standing in the alley behind Trent’s apartment building, and Amy is giving the large dumpster a disgusted look.

“Exactly,” Methos says cheerfully. “Though to be accurate, I want you to go dumpster diving. I’ll boost you in.”

“ _Why_ exactly?”

“The police have already identified Trent. That means that if they’re at all efficient, they will have cordoned off his apartment for evidence. They may even have someone monitoring it, though given their resources, that seems less likely,” Methos explains.

“So you want to dig through the _trash_?”

“Trash is very informative,” Methos says. “It’s also no longer his personal property, which means it’s not illegal for us to take anything we find. Technically.”

“I thought we were going to be breaking and entering.” Amy sounds remarkably disappointed that they won’t be engaging in criminal activities.

“We are. We’re just breaking and entering into the building dumpster rather than an apartment.”

“That’s trespassing.”

Methos shrugs. “Close enough.”

Amy tries one more time. “Can’t you just, I dunno, talk your way past the cop on the apartment? Or pick the lock or something?”

Methos raises an eyebrow at her. “Why would I do that? This will be just as efficient and much less difficult.”

“Yeah, says you. I’ll be the one scrounging in the trash.”

“It builds character.”

Amy is still muttering as Methos gives her a leg up into the dumpster, and it picks up volume and intensity as she apparently steps in something squishy. She curses well.

“How am I supposed to know which one is his?” she asks, annoyed.

“You’ll have to open them. Look for receipts and junk mail. Most people don’t bother to shred them.”

She calls him something rather unflattering, but he can hear her rustling around in the bags.

Approximately ten minutes later, Methos has to dodge a bag of trash as she hurls it out of the dumpster. She grins impishly at his glare, but given the state of her clothing, he lets it pass.

“Okay, let’s see what we can find out about what Mr. Mitter was up to these last few days,” Methos says as he upends the trash bag on the pavement.

It’s not terribly messy as far as personal refuse goes. Judging from the bulk of the contents, Trent had clearly been a fan of microwave meals and not particularly concerned with recycling. The worst of the mess is the wet coffee grounds that stick to the rest of the items.

There is also a box for a newer model digital camera and a good number of receipts. Methos grabs them, sweeps the rest of the mess back into the bag, and replaces it in the dumpster on the slim chance that someone investigating the man’s death would see the trash and make the connection.

Methos knocks the coffee grounds off his hands and grimaces. “Shower?” he asks Amy.

“Yes please,” she answers immediately, already headed back toward Mac’s car.

It’s petty, he knows, but given the trouble Mac is putting him through on his behalf, Methos takes a small amount of vindictive pleasure in watching Amy slide her now-stained pants onto Mac’s leather seats.

One takes their amusements where they find them.

**

Methos examines the receipts as Amy showers, having called first dibs as they entered the houseboat. She’ll need longer anyway, so he doesn’t argue.

The receipts are a catalog of the ins and outs of daily life: grocery store purchases, fuel, restaurant receipts, several movie rentals, and bar tabs. The oldest is perhaps three weeks old, and Methos guesses that the late Trent ate out more often than not. It had taken some time for the trash to be full enough to require emptying.

It takes awhile, but he eventually sees a pattern of sorts.

“Where is Hawk Street?” he asks Amy when she emerges from the bathroom.

“Never heard of it,” she says, voice muffled as she rubs her hair vigorously with a towel.

Looking it up online, Hawk Street ends up being in the far northwest corner of Seacouver running alongside the industrial docks and storage warehouses.

He relays as much to Amy, who looks less than overwhelmed with this finding. “And?”

“Your friend Trent was at a gas station on Hawk Street three times over the last month.”

“So?”

“Hawk Street isn’t close to Trent’s apartment, place of employment, or any of his friends or relatives. Unless he happened to have very close ties to a squatter.”

Amy screws her head up in consternation. “What is up there?”

“Nothing. Ships and warehouses.”

“So why was he there?” she asks.

“Exactly my question,” Methos says.

She gives him an admiring look. “You’re good at this.”

He waves away the compliment. “You can say that when we actually find MacLeod. This may not even be related.”

“But you think it is?”

“We know that Trent purchased a new camera in the last few weeks and spent some time in an area of town he had no business being in. We also suspect that he was at MacLeod’s house just before he disappeared and ended up dead. Yes, I do think it’s related.”

“So what do we do now?” Amy asks.

“ _We_ are not doing anything. _I_ am going to pay a visit to Bruce Leander, the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Youth Center. I’d like to ask him some questions about the Center’s financial records.”

“And what will _I_ be doing then?” She mimics his accent. Badly.

Methos makes a show of looking around the houseboat. “I suppose you could continue your forays into cooking. If given enough time, I imagine you can scrape together something edible by dinner.”

Amy wrinkles her nose. “Funny. But really, you should take me along with you.”

“And why’s that?”

“I can be a lookout. Like, say you go in there and Landers-“

“Leander.”

“Whatever, say Leander calls in some muscle. I could text you to let you know they’re coming.”

“Why would you think he’d be calling in ‘muscle’ rather than the police,” Methos asks her, quirking an eyebrow.

She grins. “Well, if he were an upstanding citizen, I doubt you’d be going to talk to him, would you?”

Methos considers her proposal. “Alright, I can see how you might prove useful.” Even if she is involved somehow, her warning Leander that Methos is coming would serve very little purpose, given that he means to meet the man face to face. “But you’ll stay out of the building.”

“Of course,” she answers, looking surprised that he would think otherwise. She gives a little shiver. “If Leander is a murderer or a kidnapper, I don’t want to be within fifty feet of him.”

Methos has been both at various points in his life, but his sympathetic smile to Amy is entirely without irony. “Me neither.”

**

Leander-Mallowitz is housed in a towering, glass-fronted building in Seacouver’s surprisingly high-end business district. It’s an impressive construction, one of the top three in the area without a doubt, and the woman staffing the Appointments booth in the lobby seems to take the seemingly elevated status of the building well to heart.

“Sir, I don’t have an appointment with Mr. Leander under your name today.”

He smiles at her charmingly. “I’m sure there must have been a miscommunication between my secretary and his. If you’ll let me speak to someone in his office, I can get it cleared up.”

His smile does nothing to sway her, and her disapprovingly pursed lips compress further.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir. No one is granted admittance without an appointment.”

“I understand you have very specific instructions, Ms.-“ he glances at her nametag “Katlyn, but I flew from the United Kingdom specifically for this meeting, and neither the trustees on my Board nor Mr. Leander’s investors will be happy if I miss it.” He puts extra polish on his accent and composes his face into a disapproving frown of his own.

He’s not sure if it’s his words, his expression, or his (apparent) nationality that makes the difference, but she agrees to connect him to one of the building security staff.

Apparently Leander is a demanding tenant, or at least an extremely disliked one, because the security supervisor Methos talks to is quick to grant him access when he implies that Leander would be irate at not getting to speak to him.

It doesn’t surprise him when the office ends up being on the top floor.

The elevators open on a reception room with thick carpet and a great deal of chrome and glass furniture. There’s yet another secretary behind a large desk, this one male, and Methos strides toward him purposefully.

“Can I help-?” the young man begins before Methos cuts him off.

“This is absurd. I’ve spent the last thirty minutes trying to convince what appears to be a Spanish Inquisitor that I do in fact have an appointment scheduled with Mr. Leander. One, I might add, that I would be very put out to miss. As it is, I’m already late thanks to the ineptitude of the communications in this building. What sort of operation are you running?” Methos uses his not inconsequential height to his advantage and looms over the young man. The secretary quails.

“You have an appointment with Mr. Leander?” he asks tentatively.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Methos asks archly.

“I apologize, sir. I don’t see anything on the calendar.” Methos looks at him steadily, and he swallows nervously. “I’ll just tell Mr. Leander you’re here to see him, then,” the secretary offers, giving him a nervous look. “Um, who should I say has arrived?”

“Duncan MacLeod,” Methos replies without blinking.

He remains hovering over the desk while the secretary mutters into his phone.

“Mr. Leander is ready for you, sir,” the secretary says with forced brightness as he lays the phone back in its cradle. “His office is just down the hall there.”

“Thank you,” Methos says curtly before walking in the direction indicated. Offices are placed on either side of the hallway at regular intervals, many with their doors closed. He doesn’t hear anything that would indicate that employees are at work in any of them. The office is silent except for the soft hum of the central air conditioning unit.

Leander’s door is closed, and Methos pushes it open without knocking.

A tall, slim man is standing by the floor to ceiling windows looking out at Seacouver. It’s a dramatic pose in a dramatic building, and Methos knows immediately that he’s found Bruce Leander.

“You’ve been terrorizing my staff,” the man says, turning to face him slowly (dramatically). He pauses, presumably to give Methos a moment to admire his tailored suit.

“They’re easy to terrorize. You should consider some sort of training.”

“I’ll take that into consideration, thanks,” Leander says in a dryly amused tone.

Leander is almost fifty-two, but he looks no older than his early forties thanks to his youthful complexion and what Methos suspects is a long-lived relationship with Botox. His skin seems unnaturally tight around his eyes and mouth.

His hair is thick and luxurious, a salt and pepper gray that makes his green eyes stand out all the more vividly. His features are regular, and his cheeks are well-shaven, but his chain is rather weak. He could never carry off a goatee, but he seems like the sort of man who would want one.

Methos takes Leander in in an instant and feels his internal warning bells begin to ring. This man is a predator.

Leander strolls casually over to a wet bar against the far wall. “I know you’re not Duncan MacLeod, though I admit to being intrigued that you used his name.” He pours Scotch into a tumbler that’s already sitting out before giving Methos an assessing stare. “Who are you?”

Methos does his own nonchalant saunter to a low-profile leather sofa facing a stunning view of downtown Seacouver and drapes himself over it.

“How do you know I’m not Duncan MacLeod like I claimed?”

Leander’s glance is amused. “As it happens, I know the man. We both sit on the Board of Directors for a local charitable organization. He’s much burlier than you are.”

“I prefer to think of myself as wiry,” Methos says. Leander’s face had given no sign of guilt or pressure at the mention of MacLeod, but perhaps that was attributable to the Botox rather than any particular amount of nerve.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of Methos’s neck stand up as another Immortal moves into sensing range. Since Bordeaux, he and MacLeod have had the ability to distinguish each other’s Quickenings from those of other Immortals.

This is not Mac.

Methos doesn’t allow his reaction to show. If he’s lucky, it was just a chance passing, and the other Immortal will move out of sensing range again shortly. Not that he’s ever been particularly lucky.

“So I ask you again. Who are you? Why are you in my office?”

“I’m Mr. MacLeod’s solicitor,” Methos lies effortlessly. Leander’s eyebrow rises skeptically.

“We use the term ‘lawyer’ in this country,” he says, somewhat snidely.

“My firm represents Mr. MacLeod’s European interests.”

“And what brings you to Seacouver, Mr.-?”

“Pierson.” He gave to police the name, and he doesn’t doubt Leander will be checking up on him. Luckily, he does in fact have a solicitor’s license under that name for a rainy day: James A. Pierson rather than Adam, though without an in-depth investigation, he doubts Leander will be able to prove anything other than the fact that Methos prefers to go by his middle name.

“I received an interesting communication from Mr. MacLeod shortly before his disappearance,” Methos goes on.

“Mr. MacLeod has disappeared?” Leander asks in surprise. He’s not as practiced a liar as he seems to think he is, and Methos smiles.

“Yes, I’m afraid he hasn’t been heard from since Tuesday. A police report has been filed. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard, what with your joint seats on the Board.”

“Mr. MacLeod and I don’t run in the same social circles,” Leander says smoothly.

At that moment the door to the office swings open and the Immortal whose Presence had been moving steadily closer for the last several minutes walks in.

Methos doesn’t turn around to look from where he sits draped across the couch, and so he does not immediately see the source of the methodically advancing footsteps. Instead he watches Leander as the man looks past Methos to the door in recognition. After a moment of watching the other Immortal, Leander’s eyes shift back to Methos in quick surprise. Then he smiles, shark-like. Methos feels warning bells—a great deal louder this time—again chiming in his head.

He needs to get out of here. Now.

“Mr. Pierson, I don’t believe you’ve met my associate, Mr. Li,” Leander says. The man is smiling rather smugly as he gestures behind Methos, and Methos at last turns to face this unexpected threat.

He actually _hadn’t_ met Mr. Li before, Methos is relieved to note. The other Immortal, a man of Japanese origins standing approximately 5’10,” is not one he’s familiar with, either from the Watcher chronicles or his own experiences. It’s harder to give the ones with personal grudges the slip.

Li is watching Methos intently with tension visible in his shoulders but no other obvious physical tells of his nervousness. If pressed, Methos would guess he were somewhere between 500 and 700 years old. Younger, and Methos would expect him to fidget more. Older, and the tension wouldn’t be visible at all. It’s not a very scientific assessment, but Methos has found it holds more often than not.

“No, I don’t believe I have,” Methos says to Leander, pointedly switching his gaze back to the mortal in front of him and dismissing the man at his back. The back of his neck tingles at the vulnerable position, but he wants Li and Leander to think he believes himself entirely secure and wonder what sort of fail-safes he has in place.

Nonetheless, Methos’s feels his ears should almost be vibrating with the effort of listening for any hint of movement behind him. Despite his iron control over his expression and body language, his heart rate has picked up noticeably.

“Pity,” Leander says. He’s still smiling smugly. “It seems you have a great deal in common. You should try to arrange a rendezvous while you remain in the country.”

Methos doesn’t respond, and Leander looks momentarily irritated with his lack of reaction.

“Mr. Pierson here was just asking after Mr. MacLeod. Apparently he’s gone missing,” Leander tells Li as the Immortal circles the couch to join him at the wet bar.

Li doesn’t answer—just leans against the wall and continues to stare intently at Methos—but Leander doesn’t seem to expect anything differently.

“You have our sympathy for the disappearance of your friend, of course,” Leander begins. He gives Methos a manufactured look of curiosity. “You _are_ friends with Mr. MacLeod?”

“He’s a client,” Methos says evenly. He refuses to give this man anything else to work with.

“A bit above and beyond the call of duty to come all the way from Europe for a client, isn’t it?”

“We feel it’s our firm’s duty and charge to provide whatever business protection and services our clients need wherever and whenever they need them.” Methos subtly emphasizes the word ‘we,’ and he can almost see the wheels in Leander’s head start spinning.

“Yes, which firm was that exactly?” Leander asks.

“It’s a highly exclusive firm. We do our best to keep our name out of the limelight. I hope you understand.” Methos practically purrs the response and shifts on the couch purposefully, allowing his Watcher tattoo to peek out of his shirt cuff. Methos is no longer officially part of the organization, having “retired” as the comments about his lack of wrinkles became more frequent, but he had kept the tattoo in hopes it may prove useful at some point or another.

He certainly hadn’t expected to use it to imply the existence of a shadowy Immortal security firm to save himself from a mortal Mob boss and his Immortal henchman, but one should always try to make best possible use of the tools available.

Methos can tell from Leander’s reaction, subtle as it is, that he doesn’t recognize the mark.

“Of course,” Leander says and wets his lips slightly. He’s beginning to get nervous, though he’s not as unbalanced as Methos had hoped, and Li doesn’t look affected in the slightest. Still, it’s something to work with.

“I was dispatched by my agency to ascertain Mr. MacLeod’s whereabouts,” Methos says. He’d be finding the use of double talk and subtext remarkably entertaining were he not so entirely focused on escaping as soon as possible. “I was given 72 hours. If he is still missing at that time, a full team will arrive in Seacouver to assist.”

“Your firm is quite thorough,” Leander replies in a monotone.

“We try to be,” Methos says, giving the man a bright smile. “We would much rather avoid the expense and the trouble, though, so if by chance you have any information to share on Mr. MacLeod’s current location, I would be obliged if you would share it with me.”

Leander appears to have rallied, and his answering smile is cool. “I’m afraid I have no meaningful information to share. You can be certain that if I did, I would go to the police immediately.”

“In that case, I must get back to my search. My office is expecting me to check in with an update in,” Methos makes a show of checking his watch, “half an hour.” Methos pulls himself to his feet slowly, but Li tenses all the same.

“I understand. Thank you for dropping by. I’ll be certain to call the police if I think of anything that may help locate him,” Leander says, ignoring the reaction of his Immortal associate. He’s not even trying to appear sincere at this point. “Mr. Li, would you please see Mr. Pierson out?”

“I’m certain I can find my way, but thank you,” Methos says.

“Oh no, I insist. These hallways can be quite misleading.”

“No doubt due to the overly standardized décor.”

“No doubt.” Leander bares his teeth, but his countenance is entirely unamused. He returns to his dramatic position in front of the window as Methos slips from the room, followed closely by Li. “Goodbye, Mr. Pierson. Thank you for dropping by.”

Methos doesn’t bother responding. Leander is a special breed of arrogant that he’s seen before: allowing enemies to struggle against him for his own amusement, but certain that in the end he will crush any opposition mercilessly.

Li remains silent as Methos retraces his steps to the elevator.

“Telling mortals about us never ends well,” Methos says to him conversationally as he waits for the elevator to arrive. The secretary’s desk stands empty, and the entire floor has a feeling of desertion.

Li’s eyes are belligerent, though his expression remains unchanged. “There is no loyalty among our kind.” His voice retains more than a trace of a Japanese accent, but his knowledge of English words and phrasing makes it clear he’s been a speaker for a decent length of time. “I do not believe that you come here as part of an Immortal agency.”

“Believe what you want,” Methos says, eyes fixed on the elevator’s floor indicator. _Come on_. “It won’t change what will happen if I disappear. I can guarantee your boss wouldn’t like the outcome.”

“I am willing to put it to the test,” Li says as the elevator arrives. “I don’t fear you.”

“Perhaps you should,” Methos replies as he moves into the elevator. Despite the small space, something in him relaxes after his back is against the wall. No attacks from behind.

“I don’t fear MacLeod either,” Li says meaningfully before the doors close and the elevator begins to descend.

Methos waits a moment to be sure the elevator hasn’t been in some way tampered with (a silly notion, but he finds paranoia to be healthier than the alternative) before slumping back against the wall and letting out a long, adrenaline-filled breath.

This is bad.

**

Amy runs up to him from the coffee shop across the street as soon as he comes out of the office building.

“What happened? Did you learn anything?” she asks him breathlessly. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement.

“Yes, actually,” he tells her calmly. “I learned that we both need to leave town.”

She’s confused. “What? But-, what about Mr. MacLeod?”

“He’ll have to rescue himself. Or the police will have to help him. I’ll give them an anonymous tip before I go.” Methos is already scanning for a taxi, having left Mac’s Mustang at the dock to avoid battling for parking downtown. There’s still a possibility he can catch a flight out of the state tonight.

“You can’t leave!” Amy shouts. Pedestrians around them turn and stare, and he hushes her. Taking her arm, he pulls her down the block to a nearby bus stop. She doesn’t resist, but she looks extremely upset.

“Here,” he says, pulling a couple hundred dollars out of his wallet and pressing it into her hand. “Go south. California maybe. That should get you to Los Angeles without any problem.”

She squeezes the bills in her fists, eyes trained on the sidewalk in front of her. “Why?”

“Warmer climate,” Methos replies bleakly. She looks up and slaps him.

“Coward,” she says. There are tears collecting in her eyes, but she doesn’t let go of the money.

“I never claimed to be otherwise,” he tells her. Then he leaves.

There aren’t any taxis available on this major road, and Methos walks several blocks to reach a less busy area, though his thoughts are turned inward to such a degree, he could have passed twenty empty cabs and not realized it.

Damn MacLeod anyway. He hadn’t asked for Methos’s help. He hadn’t asked for Methos at all. Instead he’d fled to America and happily let whatever tentative connection they still had die a mute death. Duncan MacLeod: the champion of lost causes and honorable motivations and other warm, fuzzy things that have no place in Methos’s life.

Like Methos has no place in Duncan’s.

Amy is still at the bus stop when he makes it back. She’s sitting glumly on the metal bench, face pale and eyes glassy.

She jumps up when she sees him, and the renewed hope in her eyes makes Methos look away.

“Up for a little more danger?” he asks her.

She grins. “Always.”


	4. Action This Day

**Action This Day**  
This town honey is a dead town  
Living in this town honey is a let-down  
Coming to this town honey is a showdown  
But there's a heartbeat pulse that keeps on pumping  
Some sunshine ray through a crack in a shutter  
Or a sight of a light at the end of a tunnel  
Still there's a feeling, this world is using me  
Action this day  
Action this night  
Oh we've gotta learn to learn to live

Katsuhiro Okonedo (Li’s true name, per the records that Joe unearths at Methos’s urgent request) has owned a storage warehouse in convenient proximity to Hawk Street since the early 1990s. Unused since that time, the building has been sitting moldering, an unusual property holding that jumps out of Li’s financial records with little effort.

At least, it is supposed to have been moldering. The building that Methos sees through the high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire is a far cry from condemned. Though not flashy or modern enough to stand out in the neighborhood, it is clear even from a distance that the steel beams that frame the building have been reinforced and the roof recently redone.

Despite the clear signs of use, the gravel lot that stretches from the large, roll-up doors to the fence is desolate and unmaintained: populated with broken down cars and rusting barrels.

Methos squints at an upper corner of the building itself where the red light of a security camera is visible.

Amateurs.

His cell phone vibrates in his pocket. It’s Amy.

“Are you in position?” he asks her. He had tasked her with climbing to the roof of the building northeast of the warehouse with a pair of binoculars and a prepaid cell phone to keep him informed on comings and goings.

“Yup,” she replies brightly. “Cold as fuck though. Wish I had brought a blanket.” The fog has drifted in off the harbor, and the evening is wet and chill.

“You’ll survive,” he tells her unsympathetically. “What do you see?”

“There’s a smaller outbuilding like you said. There are cars parked in it, I think. It’s hard to see.”

“Any guards?”

“Yeah, two. Mmm, wait, three. Two by the door to the warehouse and one by the outbuilding.”

At that moment, a vehicle drives quietly along the service road, and Methos steps into the alley. The car—a dark, newer model sedan, though it’s impossible to make out any other details—passes him before turning down a small gravel path that bisects the service road on the north side of the Brighter Days warehouse.

“There’ll be another vehicle joining them in about twenty seconds,” he tells Amy. Let me know what it does.”

“On it, Captain,” Amy says cheerfully.

Once the vehicle’s tail lights disappear behind the building, Methos inspects the gravel path it had taken. It’s obviously used frequently, and he feels a momentary glow of satisfaction at his accurate assessment of the warehouse blueprints he had located: the north side of the warehouse is far more secure to prying eyes given its proximity to a decommissioned power plant: a hulking building that crouches on the harbor, smokestacks pointed mournfully toward the sky.

It’s the side Methos would have chosen for an entrance, were he using the warehouse as a base for an illegal operation.

“The car just parked itself in the outbuilding,” Amy’s voice comes over his Bluetooth headset. Dead useful, those things. “There are definitely other cars in there. I could see them in the headlights.”

“How many?”

“Uhh, twenty? There may be more. I’m not sure how far back the building goes. Okay, now the driver is walking out toward the warehouse. He has a girl with him,” Amy’s voice goes high in surprise on this last observation.

“What do they look like?”

“He looks like a businessman. Older, wearing a suit. She looks like a ho.”

“Care to elaborate?” Methos asks.

“Big boots with heels, short skirt, big hair. I think I can see her underwear from here.” Amy’s voice is blatantly derisive as she imparts the description, and Methos decides to get back on track.

“I’m going to try to find a way in on the south side of the building,” he tells her. “I’ll be taking out one of the cameras. Let me know if you see any activity heading my way.”

“Roger,” Amy replies before he ends the call.

Methos stands for a moment longer watching the warehouse. The night is quiet, and he sees no signs of movement.

He picks up the duffle bag he had packed specifically for this mission and walks toward the building. When he’s close enough but still outside what he judges to be the camera’s line of sight, he pulls a BB pistol from his jacket pocket and shoots out the lens of the camera covering the south side of the building. There’s a quick, muted sound of breaking glass, then silence.

“Quieter than a silencer,” he had said to Amy’s skeptical look when he was packing earlier. He also has a 9mm secreted away, but with any luck, he won’t need to use it.

Whoever is using the warehouse (and Methos is 99% sure it’s Leander) has focused the majority of the security on the north side of the building. There are at least three cameras on that side that Methos had seen versus the single camera on the south end to monitor the yard. He’s hoping that whoever is watching the feed will assume the camera malfunctioned and won’t investigate immediately. He’s banking on it.

He waits a moment longer, listening intently for the sounds of someone approaching, but the night remains quiet.

Slipping quietly and quickly up to the chain-link fence, he flips himself over it soundlessly, using a ratty coat to cushion the barbed wire. Once in the yard, he moves in a low crouch between the broken vehicles until he reaches the side of the building. He doesn’t see any other cameras.

There’s a small door approximately halfway down the building that’s chained shut. The padlock requires only half a minute to pick. The alarm on the door—not a sophisticated one—perhaps a minute.

Methos moves the BB pistol back into his hand as he eases the door open and slips inside. He crouches against the door immediately and scans the area in front of him.

It’s dark, and it takes some moments for Methos’s eyes to adjust even after the dimness of the lighting outside. He holds his breath, but no alarm rings, and his cell phone remains silent. His entry must have been undetected.

Methos can tell from the feel of the air currents on his face that he’s likely in a large space, though not an empty one. As dim shapes begin to appear in the darkness, it becomes clear that the warehouse was at some point cut in half. The half Methos is currently crouched in holds boxes and large pieces of construction equipment draped in dusty cloths. The windows are closed, and the air smells musty.

He moves to the far wall, less cautiously as it seems Leander does not feel this half of the building requires monitoring. The wall is obviously a newer construction than the building itself, and as Methos draws closer to it, he begins to hear a dull roaring sound that he can’t place.

There isn’t a door to connect the two halves of the warehouse, and the metal wall rises unbroken from floor to ceiling. There’s no way through.

As Methos paces the length of the wall thinking furiously, his feet encounter something metallic set in the concrete floor. He looks down to find a metal grate: an entrance to a subbasement service corridor of some sort with metal handholds set helpfully into the concrete chute to form a ladder.

He stares at it suspiciously. He’s never this lucky.

As expected, the grate remains unchanged under his glare, still set innocuously in the floor as the best method of getting where he wants to go. It’s padlocked, but he makes short work of the minor impediment and lifts the grate.

It’s hung on rusty hinges, and it squeaks alarmingly no matter how slowly Methos attempts to move it. Abandoning stealth in favor of speed, he quickly opens it as wide as it will go, and slips inside. A squeal echoes through the room.

He crouches in the tunnel and listens for several minutes, but no one appears to be coming, and he downgrades his opinion of Leander’s security down even further.

The tunnel is narrow—perhaps four feet across—but has a higher ceiling than Methos had expected. Pipes and cables run above his head, but he has enough room to walk upright. The walls and floor are concrete, and here and there, bundles of pipes stick out of the wall to provide access points to the extremely basic plumbing and electrical systems of the building.

There is no light beyond the small space Methos is standing in, and he pulls his cell phone from his pocket, using the screen to provide a small amount of illumination. It buzzes in his hand.

“Amy, everything alright?” he asks, activating the headset. He keeps his voice low but does not whisper, as it’s becoming increasingly evident that no one is listening.

“I’m fine. Just wanted to update you: five more cars have arrived since I got here, all parked in that building.”

“How many people altogether?” Methos asks. The tunnel bends in a sharp “Z” before continuing north toward the other half of the warehouse, and he flattens himself against the wall to check for surveillance before proceeding. There isn’t any.

“I think twelve or so. Mostly men.”

“Businessmen?” As Methos draws closer to the north end of the warehouse, the roaring sound he has been hearing begins to grow louder. Dim light streams down from another entry grate signaling the end of the tunnel. Based on Methos’s estimates, it should open up in the north half of the warehouse near the dividing wall.

“Sometimes,” Amy replies. “I mean, some of them were wearing suits, but others were dressed normal.”

“’Normal’ meaning?” he asks her distractedly. Looking upward and listening intently, it seems that luck is once again on his side and this grate is also unguarded. Judging from the sound—louder than he’s heard it, but still somewhat muffled—and lack of light, the opening is in a small, dark room.

“Like anyone you’d see on the street. Jeans and shirts and shit.”

“Did anyone stand out?”

“Well there wasn’t anybody in a kinky costume, if that’s what you’re asking.” Amy says wryly.

Bracing himself on the ladder, it takes Methos very little time to unlock the padlock through the widely spaced bars and climb into a small storage room full of boxes. This grate squeaks as well, but with the obvious volume of the noise coming from just beyond the storage room’s door, he’s certain no one would have heard.

It occurs to Methos that he knows this sound. He knows it very well.

It also occurs on him that he had neglected to ask a very important question at the start of this whole thing.

“Adam,” comes Amy’s worried voice to his ear. “Are you still there?”

Methos gently turns the knob and eases the door open as slowly as he can. The sound washes over him unfiltered, and he confirms what his instincts have been telling him for the last several minutes.

The sound is the roar of a mob: bloodthirsty and frenzied.

“Amy,” Methos asks her calmly, “what exactly did MacLeod teach at Brighter Days?”

“Well, boxing,” Amy replies as he steps through the door. “Why?”

The door opens to a large crowd of people, all facing away from Methos and yelling energetically at a wooden arena erected in the middle of the floor where two men are doing their level best to beat each other into submission. As Methos watches, one of the men lands a powerful uppercut on his opponent, and the loser falls senseless to the ground in a spray of blood and broken cartilage. The crowd roars its approval.

“No reason,” he assures her.

**

Given MacLeod’s academic career, Methos had assumed the man volunteered to teach a class on history or current events. Maybe career counseling. Methos had also assumed that the ‘pretty’ missing youth from the Center that Grey had alluded to were being taken for some sort of prostitution ring. In his experience, that is the most likely motive for targeting such victims.

What he sees now is a good reminder of the idiocy of making assumptions.

Amy is still on the line. “Adam? What’s going on? Adam?”

“I’m fine. I’ll call you soon. Stay put,” he murmurs before disconnecting the call and pocketing the earpiece.

The crowd—between forty and fifty individuals—pays him no mind as he exits the storage room, and he is easily able to slip into their midst without any unwanted attention. There is another, far more entertaining spectacle as far as everyone else is concerned.

The arena is made of plywood that has been hastily erected in a circle and propped up with two by fours. Sawdust—now liberally peppered with spots of blood—is strewn throughout.

The winner of the match is walking a victory lap, bare arms held high, while the unconscious loser is being dragged out by a pair of well-muscled men with bruises of their own. There’s no sign of MacLeod, but a blackboard hung on the opposite side of the ring places ‘The Scottish Slaughterer’ in first place. Methos has no illusions about who that is likely to refer to.

As Methos watches, the match’s self-styled MC steps to the center of the ring. He’s young, perhaps in his late twenties, with filthy hair and an even filthier smirk.

“Let’s give it up for the Star Spangled Hammer! Yeah!” the MC shouts as the crowd screams along. “We’re going to take a brief intermission here so that you honored guests can take a minute to browse the merchandise being displayed by these lovely ladies.” He gestures to a girl in a skimpy outfit holding an old fashioned cigarette seller’s box now filled with bags of white powder. “The next match starts in an hour, where we’ll continue with our Hottie Division championship! All sexy young ladies age twenty-two and below fighting for the title!”

The crowd roars even more loudly at this announcement, and a couple of the men in the crowd near Methos let loose loud wolf-whistles.

“Don’t go far! The night is far from over!” the MC concludes before leaving the ring. There is a general sense of movement in the crowd toward the ‘merchandise,’ and Methos takes the opportunity to slip around to a corner on the opposite side of the arena.

There are four men obviously meant to be guards placed throughout the room, all with noticeable bulges under their jackets and restlessly watchful eyes. Additionally, Methos spots six separate cameras mounted to the wall. Clearly, Leander had focused his security budget in the north half of the warehouse. He doubts that whoever is monitoring the feeds was told to watch for him, but he cannot count on Leander or Li remaining absent for the entire night. He’ll need to move quickly.

The unconscious fighter had been pulled out of the north end of the arena by his comrades, but from there, Methos had lost sight of them in the crowd. He doesn’t see them now.

Still, the fighters are clearly being kept somewhere. He just needs to discover where and see if Mac is among them.

However, Methos’s sensing range (which _is_ slightly larger than other Immortals’, a fact which he doesn’t advertise and attributes to age) is registering no other Immortals in the building. Unless Mac is lying dead somewhere, he’s not currently in the warehouse.

His eyes are caught again by the placement of the security cameras. Four of them are covering the room as a whole from various angles, and one is focused on the entrance. The last camera, incongruously, is pointed at a room in the northwest corner. Like the storage room Methos had emerged in, the room is formed from two cheaply constructed walls squaring off a corner of the warehouse.

One of the guards—an especially tall and bulky one—is standing in front of the door. It’s not the most subtle method for securing an item of value, but it’s irritatingly effective. The crowd is quickly thinning as the spectators stream either toward the drugs or the door and won’t afford him cover for much longer, but Methos sees no conceivable way of slipping past the guard without notice.

So he joins the funnel of people buying illicit substances and purchases a joint.

**

Slipping through the north exit, he smiles uncertainly at the guards and gestures abortively toward the marijuana in his hand. “Wanted away from the crowds. Is it alright if I?” He uses his head to motion toward the back of the warehouse where it borders the water and dials his accent into something vaguely Canadian.

The guard waves him off dismissively. “Yeah whatever. Just stay away from the road.”

“Will do,” Methos assures the guard earnestly as he ambles toward and then around the northwest corner of the building.

When he’s out of sight, he calls Amy.

“Where have you been?!” she hisses. “I’ve been deciding whether or not to call 911.”

“Let’s hold off on that,” Methos tells her keeping his own voice low so it doesn’t carry back to the guards. “An operation this size would have someone in the police department to tip them off, and they’d clean house before any law enforcement arrived. Have you seen anyone being dragged or carried out of the warehouse in the last hour?”

“ _Dragged_?” she says incredulously. “No. Only smarmy men in suits on their feet. Why? What’s going on in there?”

“Apparently Leander has been holding modern gladiatorial games. I think you were being recruited for the Hottie Division.”

Amy is silent for a moment. “That’s--…I think I’m insulted.”

“I think you should be,” Methos agrees. “Judging by the less than gentle method Leander’s men used to enroll you, at least some of the fighters aren’t here by choice.”

“Is Mr. MacLeod there?”

“I haven’t found him yet, but I’m sure he’s one of the participants,” Methos says as he looks around the grounds. “The fighters aren’t being kept inside. I had thought maybe there was another exit from this part of the building that led to a ship or something. But I don’t see a door. Or a ship, actually.” His voice trails off as his gaze falls on the closed powerplant, its exterior fence sitting no more than twenty feet from his position.

Then his eyes fall to the ground beneath his feet.

“Ooh, nice,” he breathes.

“What was that?” Amy asks over the headset.

“Amy, can you see anything inside the power plant just north of here?” Methos asks her.

“That big building with the smokestacks? Not really. I mean, it looks all dark and closed up from here.”

“I think there may be a tunnel from the northwest corner of the warehouse into that power plant.”

“A _tunnel_? Aren’t we at the water line? I mean, we’re at the docks.”

“I was just in a service tunnel beneath the warehouse, so it’s clearly possible to build one,” Methos says.

“But still. Isn’t that sort of Bond villain?”

“It is classically nefarious,” Methos agrees. “I’m going to check inside. Keep an eye on the warehouse and the power plant. Call if you see any movement.”

Amy sounds nervous. “Are you sure we can’t call the cops?”

“No,” Methos orders firmly. “If Leander gets tipped off—and if we call the police, he will be tipped off—I don’t want to risk him moving Mac and the other fighters.”

“Do you think he would kill them?” Amy asks in a hushed voice.

“Probably not,” Methos lies, “but I don’t want to go to the trouble of finding them again. It’s too much work.”

The comment works as intended, and Amy lets out a small amused exhalation.

“I’ll give you twenty minutes. If I don’t hear from you before then, I’m calling 911,” she says, once again serious.

“Thirty minutes,” Methos counters, leaving no room for argument. “It will take me at least ten minutes to get inside.”

“How will you get in?” Amy asks curiously.

Methos has already calculated possible points of entry in consideration of the time available and come to an unpleasant if inescapable conclusion. He eyes the dark water lapping at the warehouse dock with a disgruntled look. He hates swimming.

“I’ll be pulling a 007 maneuver of my own,” he sighs into the headset.

“Something involving a fancy car and a woman in skimpy clothes?”

“Underwater approach.”

“Ah,” Amy pauses a beat to digest this. “Stay warm!” She sounds entirely too amused at his expense, but perhaps that is due primarily to her nerves. Methos recognizes and embraces humor as a tension release.

“If this doesn’t work, we’ll see about fitting you in a gold swimsuit and hotwiring an Aston Martin.”

She squawks in protest, but still manages to call out “Thirty minutes!” before Methos ends the call. He places the headset, cell phone and gun in a water proof duffle bag he had brought along in case of just such a submerged circumstance. Methos may tease MacLeod about being a Boy Scout, but he learned long, long ago that it always pays to be prepared when entering an unknown situation.

He takes another moment to glare at his destination. It _would_ be a power plant of course. Given the dramatic events the last time he and MacLeod found themselves in such a venue, he should have expected this from the get-go. Fate has always seemed to take a relentless pleasure in baiting him.

Belongings secured, he shifts the duffle bag higher onto his shoulder and marches resolutely toward the water. Waiting won’t make it grow any warmer. Unfortunately.

He slides into the chill, black water soundlessly. After another moment, not even a ripple is left to give evidence to his passing.

**

Unlike the warehouse, the exterior of the power plant doesn’t appear to have even the most minimal surveillance equipment. It’s not surprising, given that it would be difficult to explain any such improvements to the true owners of the property, but Methos doesn’t assume the interior will be likewise unmonitored.

The exterior door proves no more difficult to pick than his initial entry into the warehouse, and he quickly finds himself in a dusty, cavernous space. The main room of the power plant had been built to include multiple windows placed near the ceiling. The panes were painted over with a dirty white paint at some point, but enough panes are broken out to allow light to trickle in from the moon outside.

Huge pieces of machinery turn the floor into a labyrinth of shadows and passages. Methos ignores it all in favor of a marked stairwell. Given everything else, Leander is clearly the dramatic, subterranean type. He descends to the basement.

The stairwell door creaks when he opens it, and he tenses, holding himself perfectly still. There are no windows, of course, but light filters through the dark space from somewhere off to his left.

Methos is only three steps from the stairwell when he feels MacLeod’s Presence.

It’s a moment of profound relief, and he closes his eyes momentarily, there in the dark space of the basement. He’s missed this. Oh, how he’s missed this.

Hushed sounds are audible from the direction the light is coming from: muted voices and some light shuffling sounds. He crouches and moves soundlessly toward them.

The basement, like the room above, is one large, open space dotted with machinery, pipes, and cables that extend up to the ceiling, no doubt the lower half of the equipment on the main floor. A large, metal platform runs the length of the east wall to create an incomplete and open second floor with stairways on either end. Hefty diesel generators crouch underneath it. The light is brighter here, and details are visible.

Methos walks silently to the east side of the room and slips behind the line of generators for cover as he makes his way north toward the light and sound.

The northwest corner of the basement doesn’t hold machinery. It holds cages.

It’s a clear, open space with a line of enclosures that run along the west wall thrown together from two-by-fours and wire. For all that, they look sturdy, and Methos knows that—without tools for escape—it takes very little to restrain a human being.

There are approximately twenty figures huddled miserably inside the line of cages, four housed in each, going by the two sets of bunked cots.

A grate much like the one Methos had climbed through in the warehouse is lying in the middle of the concrete floor, unattached from where it had been covering the entrance to a service tunnel Leander must have co-opted. As he watches, a guard—armed of course—pulls a bloodied middle-aged man up the shallow shaft. A second guard follows, and between the two of them, they pull the man, unresisting, to one of the cages. None of the other prisoners move while the guards unlock the door and push the man inside.

Someone coughs off to the left, and Methos shifts enough to see a third guard seated in a chair to provide a good view of the prisoners and the entrance to the service tunnel.

It also provides the guard an excellent vantage of another cage sitting a bit southwest of the entrance to the service tunnel: this one a smaller, free-standing structure with iron bars, like a structure meant to house a tiger.

Currently it’s housing MacLeod.

The Highlander is standing up straight in the cage, despite the fact that the top is so low, it must be brushing the top of his head. His shoulders are thrown back proudly, and his chin is high. He looks like the hero he is, and though Methos knows he must be straining to locate the source of the Immortal Presence he feels, his face is composed.

Methos stares for a moment longer than he should. He can’t help himself. He never could.

The two guards that had returned the fighter to the cage disappear down the service tunnel, leaving the final guard alone. Despite what he had expected, there are no cameras visible. It’s far better odds than he’d hoped for.

The guard had chosen his location assuming that all threats would come from the service tunnel or the cages, and it’s the work of a moment to club him from behind. He lets out a small “oof” as he falls to the floor, but then he lies still.

“Hi. Miss me?” Methos asks MacLeod.

“Like a hole in the head,” MacLeod says fondly. MacLeod’s eyes are locked onto Methos’s face in a curiously intense way, flicking over his features as though drinking them in before moving down the rest of him to take in his wet clothing, which is clinging rather conveniently.

Methos feels something in his chest flutter, but he keeps his voice flippant.

“I’m offended, MacLeod. Here I come all the way across the Atlantic to visit you, and you don’t even have the good manners to be home. What sort of host makes his guest pick the lock?” Methos crouches over the guard’s prone form to search his pocket for keys. The other prisoners are shifting in their cages and peering out at Methos hopefully, but Mac mimes for them to stay silent, and they obey. Their eyes are pleading.

“Don’t complain. I know you rejoice in opportunities to pick my locks,” Mac replies grimly, despite the light words. “He doesn’t have the keys. Only the guards at the other end of the tunnel can open the cages.”

Methos stands and reaches for his lock pick. “Well that’s tiresome. Leander’s security protocols are terrible in any other regard. It’s just our luck—or your luck, rather—that he’d do something right eventually.” He looks at MacLeod and raises an eyebrow. “It _is_ Leander behind all of this?”

“It is,” MacLeod affirms, his pronounced Scottish brogue betraying a simmering anger. “He’s been using the Youth Center to launder funds from his illegal fights through a new construction project. I was at the office looking for proof when his men tried to grab one of the girls for this revolting farce. I stepped in.”

“You could have done so a mite more effectively,” Methos tells him. The lock on the cage is much more complicated than the padlocks that have come before, and he’s having trouble lining up the tumblers.

MacLeod scowls. “They were kidnapping a girl off the street, M-, Adam! I couldn’t just do nothing. Not all of us are capable of standing by and watching travesties unfold in front of us.” MacLeod’s tone is laden with subtext, and Methos gives him a wary look. He _really_ doesn’t want to go through this song and dance again.

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t have helped her,” Methos says tartly. His twist of the lock pick is vicious, and another tumbler clicks into place. “I just meant you shouldn’t have gotten captured while doing so. What have I told you about carrying a backup weapon? Now you’re locked in a cage at the whim of a narcissistic mob boss and his pet Immortal. I wouldn’t say it’s a preferable outcome.”

MacLeod has the grace to look slightly abashed. “I didn’t expect there to be another Immortal involved.” He pales as something occurs to him. “Have you met him? Does he know who you are?”

Methos would be touched by the obvious concern for his safety was he not so pressed for time. And the tumblers were _still not cooperating._

“At the moment he and Leander think I’m part of a shadowy, Immortal cabal of merciless bodyguards and mercenaries here to locate you.”

MacLeod blinks. “Ah, okay.” He pauses a moment. “Is Joe with you?”

“No,” Methos replies. “He’s providing whatever intelligence he can from a distance. At the moment the shadowy cabal is made up of me and Amy.”

“Amy!” MacLeod says in shock before his eyebrows narrow is disapproval. “She shouldn’t be involved in this. She’s just a teenager!”

Methos knows many cultures—ancient and current—where Amy would be well into adulthood, but now isn’t the time for a lecture on evolving social norms. “She was involved as soon as she was targeted by Leander’s men. Besides, she insisted. I think she has a crush on you.”

Whatever reply Mac is planning remains unvoiced, as at that moment another Immortal walks into sensing range. Methos and Mac look to the grate to the service tunnel. There are still two tumblers to go.

“Go,” Mac orders.

“Here,” Methos says simultaneously as he quickly passes a wrapped bundle from the duffle bag through the bars. Mac clearly recognizes the heft and length of the Claymore immediately, and he holds it almost reverently. Methos also passes him a 9mm (pragmatism!), though he doubts the younger Immortal will use it as long as he holds his father’s sword.

“Be careful,” MacLeod tells Methos, eyes still fixed on the service tunnel.

 _Ditto_ , Methos thinks as he sprints back to the line of generators. There’s no time to verbalize it, but he hopes that on some level Mac hears him anyway. Not that he’ll take it to heart, the great martyr.

Li is first out of the tunnel, a semi-automatic pistol clutched in his hand and clad in a long, black trench coat. He’s followed by the two guards who had been in the room previously. The three of them fan out to cover the space, eyes scanning for threats. Li’s eyes linger on the wrapped sword in MacLeod’s hands, and a small, mad smile darts across his face momentarily. MacLeod looks back at him stonily.

When no immediate danger is apparent, Li calls out, and Leander emerges from the service corridor. He’s still clad in his sleek suit from earlier, and he confidently holds the gun he has clutched in his hand.

He’s pointing it at Amy, pulling her up the shaft with a cruel hand clutched around her upper arm. She’s pale and sobbing quietly, and Methos bites back a curse.

Brant is last one of the tunnel. The only one not holding a weapon, he stands just behind Leander and looks completely ill at ease. If anything, he’s paler than Amy and looks moments away from passing out. But he doesn’t have a gun pointed at his head, and Methos’s heart—after sinking a bit at the teenager’s plight—hardens in his chest. This is preferable. Methos doesn’t need it getting in the way.

Leander walks in a slow circle around the entrance to the service tunnel, pulling Amy along beside him as he surveys the scene. His eyes flit over Methos’s hiding place in the shadows of the generators but don’t linger.

“Come out, Mr. Pierson,” Leander calls. “I know you’re here.” He uses his grip on Amy’s arm to shake her meaningfully. “I have it on good authority that you entered my property twenty minutes ago.”

Methos stays crouched. Leander is clearly itching to hear himself talk, and he sees no reason to interrupt the monologue.

Leander looks inquiringly toward Li, and the Immortal nods once in affirmation. Li’s eyes are wild, almost rabid as they continuously scan the shadows. He must have managed to pick Methos’s Quickening out as a separate signature from MacLeod’s.

“I was very surprised to see you in the security footage at the match,” Leander goes on. As expected. “You don’t strike me as a man who would enjoy such a sport. But our meeting was rather brief, so perhaps I misjudged you.”

“Forcing children to battle until they’re bloody for the amusement of rich men who feel they’re above morality isn’t _sport_ ,” MacLeod grits out. Leander shoots him an amused glance but otherwise ignores him.

“Take your friend, MacLeod, for instance,” Leander continues, using his free hand to motion carelessly toward the Highlander. “I’ve seen a lot of fighters in my time, but none that move quite so well as he does. It’s almost…poetic. He’s a fan favorite.” The businessman leers at Mac, and is given only a cold glare in return.

“I suppose I should count myself lucky that I stumbled across him. Or rather, he stumbled across my employees. Given his investigation of my business affairs, it was clear immediately that he needed to disappear, but it seemed a shame to waste such a valuable,” Leander wets his lips lightly with his tongue, and Methos determines then and there that he is going to kill him, “opportunity.”

Leander pauses a moment and then looks abruptly irritated.

“Enough of this. Come out. Now.” Leander switches his grip to Amy’s hair and drags her head back, cruelly digging the barrel of the gun into her neck under her chin. She makes a small sound of pain.

MacLeod looks ready to rip Leander’s head off with his bare hands, but Methos doesn’t move.

Another thirty seconds or so pass in silence, and Leander looks even more annoyed.

“Mr. Pierson, really, this is childish.” Leander’s voice is calmly measured, but Methos can see his shoulders tensing in irritation. He does not enjoy being toyed with. The businessman looks again at Li, presumably for reassurance that Methos is in actuality in the building, but the Japanese man ignores him in favor of continuing to scan his surroundings.

MacLeod looks pained at the continued silence, but he’s familiar enough with Methos to know better than to interfere, and it is only when Leander begins to look very slightly uncertain (there’s a certain softening about the eyes) that Methos steps out of the shadows.

“Sorry, were you looking for me?” he asks, voice light with innocent surprise. Immediately, four guns and seven pairs of eyes are trained on him.

“So good of you to join us,” Leander says bitingly. His eyes on Methos are murderous, and Methos smiles at him brightly.

“Given the circumstances, I wasn’t certain I was truly welcome,” Methos tells him, still smiling. Leander looks as though he’s grinding his teeth. “I didn’t have an actual invitation to tour the premises, after all.”

“Quite,” Leander says coldly. “And while we’re on the subject, I have to say that I take issue with your trespassing.”

“Better trespassing than kidnapping and murder,” Methos tells him.

Leander’s eyes are snakelike. “Murder? Mr. Pierson, I’m afraid you have me at a loss. No murder has been committed.”

“I imagine Trent Mitter would disagree with you,” Methos tells him primly.

“Trent is dead?” MacLeod asks, and his voice is full of an icy rage. Judging by his expression, the question is rhetorical (some part of him must have already guessed at the fate of the man), but Methos answers anyway.

“I’m afraid so. Snatched right off your new houseboat, if I’m not mistaken. Which I’m not,” Methos speaks to MacLeod but keeps his eyes on Leander. “But you’d have been proud of him. To the last, he never gave them what they were looking for.”

Something in Leander’s eyes sparks, and Methos smiles at him chillily. “I assume you didn’t expect a part time clerk to be so resistant to torture. Or so clever in his choice of hiding places.”

Leander’s face is expressionless. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.” Off to Leander’s left, Li is tensing more obviously. Methos doubts the Japanese man has blinked once since the confrontation began.

Methos scoffs disbelievingly and nonchalantly pulls an SD card—secure in a small, plastic case—from his pocket. He holds it up and looks at Leander meaningfully. “I think you do. I think you’ve been looking for the photos that he took of your ‘business operations’ for the last several days. That’s why you had Brant spend the night last night: to see if he could succeed where your goons had failed.”

Brant makes a muted sound of pain at this, and Methos looks at him directly.

“I thought you liked me,” Methos says evenly.

“I do.” Brant looks as though he’s about to be sick, his expression utterly stricken. He’s clearly not built for criminal activity, but he made his decision well before Methos came on the scene. Pity.

Methos shifts his gaze back to Leander. “Somehow Trent stumbled across proof of your kidnapping and illegal fighting ring. He came here with a newly purchased digital camera and took photos linking you to the business in the warehouse. Then he took them to MacLeod, who already suspected that you were using the Youth Center to launder your profits from your illegal enterprises.” Methos cocks his head slightly as he surveys the businessman. “I have to say, you’re not particularly adept at covering your tracks.”

“I’ve had better months,” Leander says tonelessly.

With a sudden explosion of violence, Leander uses his grip on Amy’s hair to pull her to his chest and place the barrel of his gun back under her chin. She yelps, hands automatically going to her head to try to relieve the pain.

“Don’t move,” Leander orders her. She stops fighting at once, her rapid, shallow breaths echoing across the concrete room.

“Pierson, or whatever your name is,” Leander says to Methos, “you’re going to tell me who else has a copy of whatever is on that card and where they’re located. Now.”

Leander’s eyes are a beginning to go a bit wild, and Methos composes his own expression into one of calm confidence in reaction. An unbalanced Leander is good, but not when the man’s gun is aimed a mortal teenager.

Methos strides forward deliberately, and the barrel of Leander’s gun—along with the other three weapons currently being bandied about—swings back toward him at the unexpected move.

There, much better, he thinks wryly. Part of Methos’s subconscious is laughing at him, and another part has thrown up its hands in despair.

Damn MacLeod and his protective impulses. He must put something contagious out into the air.

“This is the original,” Methos says, flipping the SD card between his fingers as he continues to walk with measured steps toward Leander, “but you’re correct about the copies. I sent an electronic copy back to my agency this morning. Staff there have instructions to use them at their discretion should I fail to return with Mr. MacLeod by dawn.” Methos speaks calmly and places a menacing emphasis on ‘agency’ and ‘staff,’ but Leander is clearly less convinced than he was earlier in the day.

“I looked into you, Mr. Pierson,” Leander says, lip curling with distaste. “A graduate student at the Sorbonne with a middling income and no connection to patrons of any importance that I was able to unearth, though the students you lecture rated you quite highly on the most recent course evaluations. You should be proud.” Methos doesn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting, but he feels a tiny thread of anxiety curl in his belly.

“Though I have to admit,” Leander continues, a sly smile now crossing his face as he glances meaningfully toward Li, “I do find it interesting that your field of study is ancient languages. Not a topic I would expect to be of use in your implied line of work. Though perhaps you have an advantage in the subject that makes it an appealing subject.”

Methos doesn’t react at all, but MacLeod stiffens in his cage (Methos obviously needs to give him some pointers in not telegraphing his emotions), and Leander’s eyes glow triumphantly.

Methos stops some ten feet or so from Leander and his cronies and surveys them calmly. “If you think I came here without safety measures in place, you’re a fool,” he tells Leander bluntly. “If I disappear, copies of the images on this,” he continues, shaking the SD card, “will make their way to the police. And from what I’ve seen of the contents, they will be more than enough to ensure your business is destroyed and that you spend a very, very long time behind bars.”

As he makes his play, Methos stares the businessman directly in the eye allowing some hint of _exactly_ what he’s capable of into his eyes. Leander pales very slightly, which—he has to admit—is extremely gratifying.

Methos lowers his voice and walks a bit closer, still staring Leander down. Li and the two guards move positions to keep him covered with their weapons. “So we’re going to make a deal. You’re going to let myself, MacLeod, and the girl go. I’ll leave my bank account information and this SD card here with you, and you’re going to deposit enough to offset the value of our time here. One hundred thousand dollars should do it,” Methos pulls the figure out of the air. Bribery and blackmail is an excellent method of implying that he won’t be going immediately to the police with what he knows. “You may keep the rest of your fighters, though I imagine you’ll want to move locations in the near future. When I receive your payment, I’ll destroy the copies.”

Leander’s face is still a bit pallid from whatever he sees in Methos’s expression, but his voice is dryly amused, which Methos can’t help but be slightly impressed by. “And I suppose I’ll just have to trust you to destroy them as you say?”

“Neither of us wants the police involved,” Methos says, circling Leander like a predator. The bodyguards follow suit. “You can easily afford the payoff. This is the best possible solution for the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

Leander is clearly considering it. If Methos had been on his own, he thinks the businessman would have bought his bluff. But he’s not alone.

Amy takes a shuddering breath and pulls against the hold on her hair weakly. “Please,” she sobs. “Please just let us go.” Leander looks down at her as though he had forgotten she was there before looking to where MacLeod is standing—stoic and tense—in the cell. Leander smiles.

“I think not, Mr. Pierson,” he says casually. “Such a maneuver would hardly protect my interests. Instead, we are _all_ going to stay here, in these comfortable and secure surroundings. You are going to call whomever you sent the files to and tell them to return them to you. If they do not arrive in a timely manner, something very unfortunate and _permanent_ is going to happen to the other members of your party. When I’m assured I have every copy, I will release you and deposit those funds you spoke of in repayment for your time and effort.” Leander’s voice is openly mocking as he speaks the promise, and Methos knows the man has no intention of letting any of them leave the power plant alive.

“Time for plan B, then,” Methos says aloud.

The shifting of positions during the standoff has left one of the guards unwisely close to MacLeod’s cell, and on Methos’s signal, the Highlander grabs his gun arm and slams him against the bars before reaching for the man’s key ring where it dangles on his belt.

Leander’s gun is still pointing at Methos, and Methos lunges for him before he can turn it back to Amy. A bullet discharges harmlessly into the ground at their feet as Methos disarms him. Rather than engage Methos directly, Leander quickly steps out of Methos’s reach and runs toward the service corridor. He disappears down it.

Another bullet—from the second guard, presumably—takes Methos in the shoulder, and he grits his teeth as he pushes Amy to the ground. Small licks of blue lightening move over it immediately. It should heal before he bleeds himself into unconsciousness.

Methos launches himself at the guard. The other man doesn’t expect it, and he freezes for a moment rather than fire again. It’s a moment too long, and Methos pistol whips him. He falls to the ground.

Stripping a second set of keys from the man’s belt, Methos tosses them to Amy as she climbs to her feet. “Get the other fighters out,” he orders.

For a moment she stands there and stares stupidly at the keys in her hand. Her lips are white, and Methos worries that she won’t be able to overcome her shock and fear, but she shakes it off and sprints toward the cages. She runs past Brant, but the counselor—still looking entirely shell-shocked—makes no move to stop her.

Brant looks at Methos entreatingly, eyes glistening behind his glasses. “Adam, please. I’m so sor-“

Methos hits him, and he collapses unconscious to lie in a heap.

The familiar sound of steel on steel rings out, and Methos whirls to see MacLeod and Li battling: MacLeod’s Claymore against Li’s wicked looking katana, which he must have pulled from his trench coat. Their guns are discarded in MacLeod’s now vacant cage, and Methos inwardly rolls his eyes.

A shot rings out from behind him, and something hot whistles past his left ear from the direction of the service tunnel. That would be Leander, then, returned with more guards.

Methos runs back to the line of generators in a low crouch, making himself as small a target as possible. Before ducking behind cover, he fumbles for his cell phone and tucks the SD card obviously into his pocket. As intended, Leander sees the movement and reacts as Methos had hoped.

“Kill him!” Leander orders the new guards: another four, Methos notes. Clearly Leander hadn’t wanted to remove all of his muscle from the warehouse. In his arrogance, Leander must think that a small armed group (no doubt backed by a ring of enforcers outside of the building) will be sufficient to keep them from escaping. Helpful, that.

Leander has focused all of his firepower and attention on killing Methos and obtaining the SD card he holds, ignoring—for the moment—MacLeod’s and Li’s sword fight and the other prisoners’ bid for freedom. It’s the best scenario possible, but it still leaves Methos taking on four armed mortals by himself.

Methos takes a moment to assess the positioning of the guards and then empties the clip of the gun he’d taken from Leander. Make that two armed mortals.

The remaining two guards plus Leander, having learned from their less fortunate comrades, take shelter behind the huge machinery and continue to snipe at Methos.

“Boss! The other fighters!” One of the guards has noticed Amy, who is only on the fourth cage. A few brave souls have emerged from their cells to assist her, but the majority is cowering, afraid of the gunfire.

Methos takes a deep breath and sprints back out in the open before turning for the stairway that leads to the raised platform above the generators. Bullets burn past him, but none of them hit. He tears up the stairs.

“Kill him!” Leander yells again. The three mortals run after him, leaving Amy and the prisoners with a clear path to the service tunnel.

Methos takes a moment to throw the now empty gun at them—entirely for the pleasure of watching them duck—before racing down the platform. He draws his gun from where he’d tucked it into coat pocket as he runs, exchanging it for the SD card.

The upper platform is stocked with various detritus for the power plant: wooden pallets of supplies covered in dusty drop-cloths, damp and moldy cardboard boxes, bundles of pipes and riots of cables, and cans of gas to power the backup generators. One of the cans is leaking, and the slick smell of diesel saturates the air.

Methos is halfway down the platform when one of his pursuers lands a shot in his knee. He tumbles and falls, and his cell phone goes skittering over the floor. He lunges for it, awkwardly dragging his leg, but an expensive leather shoe crushes it—and his hand, incidentally—before he can reclaim it. A second foot, clad in a combat boot, crushes his other forearm and pins it to the ground, leaving him stretched out like nothing so much as an insect affixed to a board.

He looks up at Leander.

The businessman’s expression is coldly furious as he stares down at Methos.

“The card if you please, Mr. Pierson,” Leander practically growls. “And if you’ll be so good as to tell me who you were attempting to call just now.” He grinds his foot down on Methos’s hand viciously. Methos feels several small, delicate bones snap, but he chokes down any sound of pain that may emerge.

Given Methos’s position, Leander clearly isn’t expecting him to retrieve the SD card himself, and the second guard leans over him to search his pockets. He places a knee in Methos’s back to do so and pushes the barrel of his gun against the back of Methos’s head in a silent threat to remain still. The entire thing is entirely uncomfortable and more than a little bit humiliating, but Methos composes his expression into one of blithe unconcern.

At least he still has hold of his gun.

The guard triumphantly fishes the SD card out of Methos’s coat pocket and hands it to Leander. He never moves his knee or gun.

“Thank you,” Leander says tonelessly as he takes the card. He examines it briefly before slipping it into an interior pocket of his suit jacket and fixing Methos with a glare.

“I’ve had quite enough of you and your theatrics, Pierson,” Leander says. “ _Who_ has my files and _where_ are they?”

The man kneeling on Methos’s back is heavy, and Methos’s voice comes out breathless when he responds. “I won’t tell you. If you kill me, my associate will send the photos to the police. You’ll destroy yourself.”

Leander stares down at him and waits. Methos glares back defiantly, and after a minute, the businessman lets out a small sigh.

“You seem to believe that this is a fight in which you can triumph,” Leander says, speaking slowly and precisely. “But this fight, Mr. Pierson, is a battle of wills. And that is one type of battle I refuse to lose.”

Leander takes the gun from the guard pinning Methos’s arm and faces the edge of the platform. The ringing clash of swords echoes up from the floor below, louder, now that Methos is concentrating on them. His heart rate picks up.

“I understand that encounters between your kind are strictly one on one,” Leander says casually. He takes his time aiming over the railing. “Though I know from previous experience that Li won’t mind me intervening on his behalf. He’s practical that way.”

Methos struggles desperately—using every ounce of strength he has available—but with the weight of the second guard in the middle of his back, he’s unable to gather enough momentum to dislodge any of the men restraining him. He succeeds in shifting his position only slightly: a victorious inch or two. Leander watches him dispassionately before turning back to the Challenge below him, finger beginning to pull the trigger.

“It’s a pity for it to end like this, of course, but it was going to happen sooner or later,” Leander continues. “It was foolish to keep him around this long, but I was unable to resist the temptation.”

Methos stops struggling and lies still on the floor, breaths shallow due to the weight compressing his torso.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he tells Leander.

Methos’s struggles have left his right hand—his gun hand—pointing toward one of the gas cans. Leander’s eyes widen as he realizes what Methos means to do, but it’s far too late to do anything about it.

Methos fires. In an instant, the smell of gas grows overwhelmingly strong. There’s a whooshing sound and a fiery ball rushing toward them. He doesn’t bother bracing himself. He’s died in an explosion before, and there’s really not any sort of mental preparation.

Everything fades to blackness and pain before his mind registers the sound and fury of the resulting blast, but judging from the amount of gas present on the platform, it would have been quite impressive.

It hurts as much as he expects. Sometimes he wishes he didn’t have such a good memory for these things.


	5. Las Palabras de Amor

**Las Palabras De Amor**  
Love me slow and gently  
One foolish world, so many souls  
Senselessly hurled through the never ending cold  
And all for fear, and all for greed  
Speak any tongue but for God's sake we need  
Las palabras de amor  
Let me hear the words of love  
Despacito mi amor

Gasping for breath as lungs come back online is involuntary, and Methos is no exception. For the first moment, he revels in the realization that once again, he’s clawed his way out of the darkness. In the second moment, he wishes he was still there, as painful spasms rack his chest and his lungs attempt to eject some foreign substance.

“Easy,” comes a Scottish brogue while a large Scottish hand simultaneously runs soothing fingers over his temple. As his nerves slowly start relaying information to his brain, Methos realizes that he’s lying flat on his back with his head cradled in someone’s lap (which he’d wager is as Scottish as the hand and voice). It’d all be very nice if Methos’s body wasn’t rebelling so violently.

Methos coughs and spits off to the side. “Help me up,” he gasps to MacLeod, and in short order he’s sitting up and being leaned against a warm, solid chest. The air smells of smoke, and somewhere off to the right, Methos can hear the sound of flames crackling. He opens his eyes.

The power plant is on fire. He and Mac are sitting somewhere outside of the main structure, leaning against one of the smaller outlying buildings Methos had seen earlier and watching the flames leap merrily on the roof.

“This is cozy,” Methos rasps. His throat is raw from the smoke, but Mac understands him anyway, if the huff of laughter is anything to go by. Warm, strong fingers are still combing gently through Methos’s hair—which didn’t burn off, thank goodness—and it makes his spine tingle.

“The other prisoners?” Methos asks to keep himself from getting distracted.

“Amy got them all out, including any of Leander’s cronies that were still alive.” Mac replies. As he speaks, his chest rumbles where Methos is leaning against it. “Most of the spectators and guards at the warehouse took off when they heard the explosion, and the rest left with the fire department and police arrived. The victims are being taken seen to by EMS.”

Methos digests this while he watches the flames. It doesn’t explain why Mac chose to remain at the power plant despite it being rather dramatically on fire. Methos has read Mac’s Chronicle: he knows the younger Immortal has experience with fleeing the police.

“Leander?” Methos asks.

“Killed in the explosion.”

“And Li?”

“Dead. What was on that SD card you were waving around?” Mac asks, apropos of nothing.

“Nothing,” Methos admits. “I couldn’t find Trent’s camera, assuming he had any evidence to begin with.”

“How did you know Leander would buy it?”

“They were obviously looking for something,” Methos points out. “That’s why they had a spy watching me.”

“That skinny guy?” Mac pauses. “You hit him pretty hard.” His tone is openly curious, but Methos doesn’t think he particularly needs to know the details.

“He had it coming,” Methos demurs. “Why are we still here? Shouldn’t we have fled the scene of the crime by now?” Mac isn’t the only one who can abruptly change topics.

Rather than answering verbally, MacLeod points to a dark lump in the shadow of the building off to their left. It’s Li, sans head.

Methos puts it together immediately. “You want me to help you hide the body,” he says flatly.

He can almost hear Mac’s flush. “There are police everywhere at the moment. I can’t exactly walk out with him slung over my shoulder. Besides, he’s heavy.” Mac sounds embarrassed and entreating.

“You could have just left him in the building,” Methos points out.

“He’s missing his head!”

“I’m sure the police report would have come up with a satisfactory reason to explain it,” Methos says acidly.

MacLeod shifts uncomfortably. “It wouldn’t have been right. He fought honorably.” Methos twists to stare at him incredulously, and the flush spreads to his ears. “He asked for a traditional Shinto funeral,” the younger Immortal mutters.

“He’s not going to know if you don’t do it.”

“I’d know,” Mac says, lifting his chin in that defiantly heroic way he has. Methos narrows his eyes at him.

“So call the Watchers, and let them deal with it.”

“I don’t have a cell phone.” MacLeod leans forward so he can look Methos in the face. “Will you please help me?” He’s using his puppy dog eyes. Methos sighs.

“You better have pulled my burned, broken body out of the building first,” Methos says warningly.

“Of course I did!” MacLeod sounds surprised Methos would think otherwise.

Methos is still half propped up against Mac’s shoulder, and the position leaves him in unfairly close proximity with the Highlander’s lovely features. There’s a smear of soot above Mac’s brow, and he actually looks worried that Methos will turn him down.

Not that there was ever any chance of that.

Methos lets out a crooked, vaguely self-deprecating smile. “The things I do for you.”

**

Li wasn’t a large man, but the dead weight presented by corpses is always difficult to move efficiently. That combined with the separated head make spiriting his body away an exercise in frustration and increasingly bizarre logistics.

In the end, Methos grabs the body under its shoulders while MacLeod takes its legs. The head is balanced carefully in its lap, and together they make their way slowly around the power plant to liberate first a body bag and then one of the vehicles parked at the warehouse.

“You really think an EMS responder will just hand us a body bag?” MacLeod asks, shifting the legs in his grip.

“I wasn’t planning on asking,” Methos replies, walking backwards carefully. He hates not being able to see where he’s going. “They won’t be locked up. It’s not as though they’re valuable.”

MacLeod grunts. “I think I should take care of the theft this time.”

Methos raises an eyebrow. “Amanda give you some tips I should know about?”

“No.” MacLeod scowls, either at the mention of the vivacious thief or at the implication that he’d been taking burglary pointers. “But you’re not fit to be seen at the moment. If anyone caught you sneaking into an ambulance, they’d think one of the corpses had reanimated.”

The explosion had thrown Methos away from the worst of the fire, but his clothing had certainly not escaped unscathed. It’s clinging to him in tatters, and where his skin does show through (he can’t help but notice that Mac’s eyes tend to linger on select locations) it is black with ash and soot. It’s certainly true that he’s not in any state to be seen.

Nonetheless, at the moment Methos is walking backwards, carrying a headless corpse, and half naked. He feels like being contrary.

“You’re not much better off,” he snaps at Mac. “You’re dressed like a vagrant.” He gives an audible sniff in MacLeod’s direction. “And you don’t smell particularly fresh at the moment.”

MacLeod glares at him. “At least I don’t resemble a zombie. You look like death.”

Methos stops moving and gives him a long, speaking look. Mac blanches. “Warmed over,” the Highlander hurries to finish. “Death with a small ‘d’.”

The younger Immortal pauses for a moment, expression one of intense discomfort. “It’s just a saying.”

Methos rolls his eyes, looks over his shoulder for obstacles and starts moving again. “I have no idea why I put up with you.”

Mac doesn’t respond or move, and after a moment of tugging ineffectually on the half of the body he’s carrying, Methos looks back at him. MacLeod’s brows are drawn together, causing a deep furrow in his forehead, and his eyes are unfocused: thoughts turned inward as he presumably chews over a complex puzzle.

“After six months of silence, you came five thousand miles to see me, spent three days tracking me down, voluntarily involved yourself in a dangerous situation, and then killed yourself in a spectacularly explosive fashion in order to save my life,” Mac says slowly, clearly voicing the words as he works them out. “Why?”

Methos feels a tendril of discomfort curl around his insides. He looks away from Mac’s open gaze and attempts once again to resume his backward shuffle. “Because you’re incapable of keeping yourself out of harm’s way, you bloody idiot.”

Mac drops the body’s legs abruptly, and with a stifled ‘oof,’ Methos staggers under the extra weight. Knocked out of balance, the head hits the ground with a muted thump and rolls away into the darkness.

“What the-, MacLeod!” Methos says, glaring his ire at the other Immortal. “I am _not_ chasing that.”

Mac is staring at him with an openly shell-shocked expression. “You love me!” the Highlander blurts, and Methos freezes.

This is not at all the conversation he wants to have with the younger Immortal. Possibly ever, but certainly not for the next several decades. MacLeod made it clear years ago—through both action and inaction—that he’d prefer to keep Methos at arm’s length.

But, as he stands there, momentarily immobile in the face of Mac’s realization, Methos realizes that he may not be as knowledgeable of MacLeod’s preferences as he thinks.

The words were phrased almost as an accusation, but as the stunned surprise fades from the younger Immortal’s face, it’s replaced with an open wonder and—perhaps, if Methos isn’t fooling himself and can trust his interpretation of the other’s expression—the beginning of joy.

This time Methos doesn’t look away, even as he feels his cheeks flush very slightly for the first time in centuries.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” he says tartly to the goofy smile that’s beginning to grow across Mac’s face in an attempt to recover a least a modicum of dignity. “And while you’re at it, you can fetch the missing piece of our friend here. We have things to do. Chop chop.”

Mac’s answering smile is inordinately fond. “Yes, dear,” he says, moving to obey.

As MacLeod passes near him, Methos takes the opportunity to kick him.

**

In the end, the two Immortals simplify the escape process by hotwiring an ambulance to transport both themselves and Li’s body out of the immediate area. After depositing the deceased with a sympathetic priest (and of course MacLeod would know of a local, spirituality-above-legality Shinto temple in the Seacouver area), they ditch the transport by parking it at a hospital and walking back to Mac’s houseboat.

The police are already there. Methos takes one look at the law enforcement vehicle parked out front—unmarked in that way that screams ‘cop’—and demonstrates that discretion is the better part of valor. The Highlander gives him a rather aggrieved look when Methos pulls an abrupt about-face and ambles away from the houseboat, but Methos has already involved himself with the Seacouver police department far more than is comfortable. Mac can handle the initial explanation of what has occurred.

Instead, Methos takes the opportunity to break into the Youth Center to make use of their gymnasium showers and kitchen. He is also pleased to find that the couch in the business office proves to be a surprisingly comfortable napping place.

When he returns to the houseboat, the sun has risen, and Mac is in the process of climbing out of the unmarked police car along with Detectives Mullins and Mulligan, presumably after several hours at the police station. He looks tired, and he’s still dressed in the dirty, tattered clothing of the night before. He scowls when Methos waves at him cheerfully.

“Mr. Pierson, was it?” Detective Mullins or Mulligan asks, raising an eyebrow and shooting his partner a glance. “This is convenient. We need to ask you some questions about your whereabouts last night.”

Methos smiles at him and does his very best to look innocent. Given that he razed the Youth Center’s donations for an outfit to replace his half-burnt clothing and is now clad in baggy jeans and a Thirty Seconds to Mars t-shirt, he’s sure he’s successful.

“Of course, Detective,” Methos tells Mullins or Mulligan graciously. “I’d be happy to answer whatever questions I can.”

They proceed as a group inside, and Mac glances rather longingly toward his bed. But it’s clear the detectives have no intention of allowing him a respite quite yet.

“Where were you last night?” the detective asks Methos as soon as they sit down at Mac’s kitchen table. Rather than claiming the fourth chair, MacLeod leans against the kitchen counter to watch the proceedings.

“I just came from my hotel room. At the Fairmont Olympic,” Methos answers. As it happens, he _had_ taken a room at the hotel when he first arrived in Seacouver, though he has yet to spend a single moment in it. “I went there from that ghastly warehouse near the bay.”

Detective Mullins or Mulligan’s eyebrow rises. “Warehouse? I assume you mean to say you were at the warehouse on Hawk Street last night?”

He knows perfectly well that Methos was there: there’s video footage, and Methos has no doubt the detective has already reviewed it.

“I was,” Methos confirms. “At maybe 11:30 or so.”

“Why were you at that warehouse?” The detective’s expression is well-composed, not giving anything away.

“I received an anonymous phone call telling me I could find MacLeod there,” Methos says, wide-eyed and earnest. From where he’s leaning on the counter behind the detectives, Mac rolls his eyes.

“An anonymous phone call?” This from the second detective and voiced with clear skepticism.

“I thought it was odd too,” Methos says with sincerity. “Like a spy novel or something. I mean, things like that don’t happen in real life, do they?”

“But you went anyway?”

“Well, yes,” Methos answers, composing his face into an expression of uncertainty. “I was worried about MacLeod. That young lady said he’d been kidnapped, and I thought that I should go and at least look at the warehouse. See if there was anything there that could help us find him.”

“Why didn’t you call the police with the information instead?”

“But I did,” Methos replies, eyes wide with surprise. “I called the police as soon as I got the call and told them the address. The policeman I talked to said that someone from the department would go investigate.”

The detectives exchange a long look of shared suspicions given foundation. Methos hopes it will be enough to spark an investigation by Internal Affairs into whoever was covering up Leander’s operation.

“Who did you speak to?” Mullins or Mulligan asks Methos carefully. Both detectives’ demeanors are suddenly much more polite.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Methos says, biting his lower lip and looking vaguely distressed. “I gave the address to the person who answered the main number at the station, and they transferred me. The policeman who answered didn’t give his name.”

The detectives exchange another look, and Methos takes the opportunity to glance at Macleod. He’s watching Methos with something that looks very much like admiration, and Methos shifts his gaze before he drops character.

“I saw men fighting,” Methos says tentatively to the detectives. “It looked brutal, and I think it was illegal. And there were drugs. Did you catch whoever is responsible?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the slimmer detective says. “There was an explosion at a power plant neighboring the warehouse last night. We’ve recovered a body that we believe belongs to the man in charge of the operations.”

Methos can’t quite bring himself to gasp dramatically, so he settles for pulling on a shocked expression instead.

“That’s terrible,” Methos says. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“There were two other casualties,” the shorter detective answers, looking satisfied in an understated way with the criminals’ fate. “But most of the individuals being kept in the power plant—including your friend Mr. MacLeod here—got out safely.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Methos says, meaning it. He pauses as though something has just occurred to him. “Will I need to testify? I mean, if there’s an investigation of some sort or a trial.”

“A signed statement should be sufficient in this case,” the slimmer detective says after a glance at his partner. “Especially given that you don’t even live in this country. We have several witnesses and an associate of the deceased who survived the explosion who all have plenty to say. It should be more than enough evidence to see justice done.”

Methos assumes that ‘associate of the deceased,’ is Brant. So he survived then. Methos is glad to hear it. Brant seems more weak than malicious. Certainly not enough of a craven criminal to warrant being burned to death.

“Should I give my statement now?” Methos asks, but—as one—the detectives shake their heads. Clearly they’re itching to chase down the corrupt elements in their department and have already dismissed Methos from their minds.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Pierson,” Mullins or Mulligan says as the two detectives climb to their feet. “Just come down to the station in the next day or two. Someone will take it there.”

MacLeod shows the detectives to the door and sees them off with a promise to call if he thinks of any additional information pertaining to the case. Though once they find the files that Methos had anonymously emailed from the Brighter Days computer system (courtesy of his overnight stay), he doubts they’ll need any more evidence to take down Leander’s network.

Then the door closes, and they’re alone.

MacLeod turns immediately to face him and with several big strides, advances well within Methos’s personal space. His face is determined and his shoulders squared for battle. Clearly he has decided that it is Time to Confront.

“Methos,” MacLeod begins, and the man in question suppresses the low thrill that wants to travel up his spine. Given how free MacLeod is with his name, sometimes Methos curses the day he learned it. But other times…

Methos holds up his hand to keep MacLeod from advancing any closer than he already has. “Mac, wait.”

Mac’s face softens, and he gives Methos an affectionate look. “I’m tired of waiting.” His voice is low and intimate enough that something curls low and hot in Methos’s belly. “We’ve already waited so many years, who knows what we may have missed out on.” A hand, broad and golden, reaches out to run a finger lightly along the edge of Methos’s cheekbone. Methos steps back before it can reach him.

“Given your collection of Immortal enemies and their propensity for kidnapping your romantic partners, it’s possible we may only have missed out on permanent death,” Methos answers lightly, more proud of himself than he ought to be that his voice doesn’t tremble at the obvious heat in Mac’s gaze. He’s wanted this for so _long._ “But before we stop waiting, there are some things that need to be taken care of.”

Mac lowers his hand, face at first perplexed and then vaguely concerned. “You-, you want to talk?” He looks so flummoxed that Methos is actually slightly offended. His desire to discuss something of importance does not an apocalypse make.

“I talk,” Methos insists, completely disregarding what he had planned on saying in favor of proving this point.

“Oh yes, endlessly,” Mac agrees in a monotone, eyes sparkling. Mischief is a good look for him, but Methos refuses to be distracted.

“I’m very articulate.”

“Speaking at great length and with much jargon about historical fermentation techniques does not make one ‘ _articulate_.’” MacLeod uses air quotes around the word, which is both ridiculous and infuriating. “And I can’t say I’ve seen you present many conversational skills beyond your uninvited lectures.”

Methos glares at him. “You’re avoiding the issue. Again. I thought you Highland types were known for your bravery. But I suppose if anyone should know better than to put stock in reputations, it’s me.”

“What ‘ _issue_ ’? And since when do you want to discuss anything? I always thought I’d have to tie you up and sit on you if I wanted to have a serious conversation.” Mac is beginning to look irritated, the light flush their bantering had brought to his cheeks fading, and Methos feels a surprisingly poignant pang at its loss.

“You’re the one who fled the country,” Methos snaps.

“This time,” Mac says pointedly, clearly referring to Methos’s frequent disappearances from Paris.

“ _Why_ would I stay? There haven’t been many indications that you’re interested in having me around for heartfelt conversations,” Methos says, equally pointed.

Mac throws his hands up into the air in frustration, pacing around like a caged jungle predator. Like he had in the church several years before. “I can’t believe I’m getting a lecture on resolving outstanding issues from a man who does his best to avoid any sort of permanence and attachment.”

Mac sounds bitter ( _What are you running from: the question or the answer?_ ), and Methos stifles the retort that comes immediately to his tongue. He didn’t spend three days rescuing Mac for them to follow the same old path in the same old way.

So he steps off of it.

“Is that really what you think?” Methos says to his friend, voice intentionally quiet. Mac whirls to face him, and the tension between them ratchets back down to that low hum that was present in their every interaction from the first. “I thought you’d noticed by now that I am somewhat attached.”

For a moment MacLeod looks thrown, and then—like a light—that same expression of quiet joy that Methos first saw the night before begins to return to his face.

“I didn’t think you wanted to be. Attached.” Mac’s voice is also low. “You always say how dangerous it is.”

Methos smiles at him genuinely and ducks his head, but Mac doesn’t call him on the studied gesture. “Most worthwhile things are.”

Mac’s eyebrow rises, and his dark eyes rekindle that heat that Methos has spent far too many years observing. The Highlander steps back into Methos’s personal space and again lifts his hand for a caress. This time Methos lets him.

“Worthwhile things like…?” Mac asks suggestively.

“Like alcohol, of course,” Methos says. His voice has gone slightly breathless at the light touch, but he doubts Mac is able to tell. “And skydiving. And social uprisings.”

Mac huffs out a laugh. “Only you would compare the French Revolution to beer.” Mac murmurs. He’s leaning in even closer, eyes intent on Methos’s lips.

“I doubt that. I’m sure the two had a very close acquaintance,” Methos says distractedly. He’s beginning to lose the thread of this conversation in the face of Mac’s…face, suddenly so much closer to his own. But then the air shifts, and he remembers why he wanted to pause.

“Mac, wait,” Methos says firmly, using his hand on MacLeod’s chest to push him back gently.

Mac smiles, but it’s clear from his eyes that he’s becoming frustrated from being stymied. Frustrated from not being able to touch Methos. It’s a heady thought.

“What is it?” Mac asks, clearly trying to be understanding and empathetic despite his rising aggravation. “If you’re worried about anything-, I won’t hurt you. I swear it.”

Methos laughs. He can’t help it. “That never crossed my mind, and let me say immediately that your chivalry is completely out of place in this instance. I’m far from a blushing damsel. No, I think we can move on from the discussion for now.”

“For now?” Mac looks dubious.

“We can postpone it in favor of enjoying ourselves,” Methos corrects with a straight face. “For, oh, two or three centuries.”

“I second that,” Mac says smiling. He leans back in and Methos twists away. His friend huffs in exasperation. “Good God, man, what is it?”

“But first, I insist that we table enjoying ourselves for approximately ten minutes,” Methos explains. “I refuse to come any closer until you shower. You smell like you just sent three days sweating in a cage with zoo animals.”

Mac stares at him blankly, lips still pursed slightly in expectation of a kiss.

“You stink,” Methos says helpfully. “Really.”

For an entire minute, Mac looks as though he can’t decide if he wants to be offended, angry, or amused.

“You…” Mac eventually utters, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I spent millennia smelling the great unwashed, MacLeod,” Methos says with mock severity. “I refuse to do so again when it’s not required. Go wash.”

In the end, Mac rolls his eyes and tweaks Methos’s nose before walking back toward the bathroom. He strips off his tattered shirt as he goes to reveal panes of well-defined muscle covered in smooth, golden skin—clearly a parting shot in their ongoing battle—but Methos doesn’t retaliate. Yet.

“Don’t mope,” he says instead. “I’ll be here when you get out.”

Mac’s smile is like the sun as he turns back to look at Methos. “You’d better, Old Man.”

In actuality, it is only four minutes rather than ten before Methos is tackled onto the bed by a wet, naked Scotsman.

**

“So?” Joe asks as soon as Methos answers the cell phone.

“Hello to you too,” Methos says dryly, leaning back against the couch cushions. “I’m doing well, thanks for asking.”

“You always land on your feet,” the Watcher says dismissively. “And I know our missing Highland friend has reappeared, since the missing person’s report has been cleared.”

“You’re getting faster. It only took your guys twelve hours this time.”

“Screw you,” Joe says amiably. “So what happened? Where was he?”

MacLeod walks out of the kitchen and into Methos’s line of sight. He revels in the view as he silently mouths the Watcher’s name to Mac’s inquiring face. “Tell me, Joe, what do you think of the Scottish Slaughterer as an alias?”

Mac’s eyes widen and he dives for the phone. Methos twists out of the way, and the younger Immortal ends up sprawled across his legs instead.

“The Scottish Slaughterer?” Joe’s confused voice is audible from the phone as Methos holds it out of MacLeod’s reach. “What the hell have you two been getting up to?”

With a mischievous smirk, Methos opens his mouth to respond in graphically truthful terms, and Mac immediately slaps a hand over it.

“Don’t you dare,” MacLeod whispers threateningly. Methos licks his hand.

“What do we usually get up to, Joe?” Methos asks once MacLeod recovers his hand with a look of disgust. He wipes it gingerly on Methos’s shirt before remembering that the eldest Immortal is clad in borrowed pajamas. Methos grins at his expression as he continues his phone conversation. “Vanquishing villains, liberating the downtrodden, and dismembering previously Immortal bodies.”

“Yeah huh,” Joe says skeptically. “I’m not sure vanquishing and liberating are really part of your repertoire.”

“I’m experiencing a period of personal growth,” Methos says as he peers up into MacLeod’s eyes. The other man has settled comfortably on top of him and is watching Methos with a fond expression.

Joe makes a sound of exasperation. “Tell Mac to call me when he’s free. I’d like confirmation that he made it out in one piece.”

“You’ll get it straight from the horse’s mouth,” Methos promises. “Ta ta.”

He terminates the call and throws the phone to the floor before rolling and doing the same with MacLeod. The Highlander grunts as Methos lands on top of him, but judging from the immediate placement of his hands on Methos’s hips, he’s not too put out by the abrupt change in position.

“You should call Joe,” Methos says, ducking his head to lean his forehead against MacLeod’s and inhales the man’s entirely too lovely natural scent: something of sandalwood and green things.

“Mmm,” Mac makes a sound that Methos takes to be agreement at this pronouncement and shifts to make himself more comfortable on the floor. They lie in silence, and Methos is unsurprised (if slightly despairing, though he’d long ago given up on himself where MacLeod is involved) to find himself more content than he can remember being in a decade.

“Is Amy dropping by?” MacLeod asks some time later.

“She’s supposed to be,” Methos replies. He’s pillowed his head on Mac’s shoulder, and he’s in no hurry to move it. “Wants to check on you, I imagine.”

Mac pokes him. “Or you. From what she was telling me at the police station, she thinks you’re a cross between Batman and James Bond.”

“Just so long as she didn’t tell the police that, I’m fine with the comparison,” Methos says lazily.

Mac chuckles. “I’ll bet you are.” He runs a gentle hand along the line of Methos’s spine, and Methos shifts slightly to settle himself more firmly on the other’s body. “What will happen to her, do you think?”

“She’ll take a job at the Brighter Days Youth Center, finish her GED course, and go to college,” Methos says with certainty. MacLeod’s hand pauses.

“That’s uncharacteristically optimistic of you.”

“It’s not much to ask for,” Methos says, lifting his head to look his friend in the eye. “A word with someone at the Youth Center; a small savings account for tuition. It really takes very little to provide the foundation for a successful future when there’s nowhere to go but up.”

“Ensure brighter days, you mean?” Mac asks with a straight face. Methos socks him in the shoulder before laying his head back down. “Oww.”

The hand continues to stroke the length of his spine.

“And our future?” MacLeod asks abruptly. His voice isn’t tentative—only Amanda seems capable of putting him into such a state—but his touch along Methos’s back is suddenly softer and more uncertain.

Methos nestles more securely into Mac’s hold and grabs his free hand in an unmistakable gesture of solidarity. "We’ll take it as it comes, of course.”

Methos doesn’t lift his head, but he can hear the smile in Mac’s voice as he returns the grip with equal strength. “Oh, of course.”

 **Under Pressure**  
Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn  
Why - why - why?  
Love love love love love  
Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking  
Can't we give ourselves one more chance  
Why can't we give love that one more chance


End file.
